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YOU AND YOUR CHURCH 





YOU AND YOUR 
CHURCH 


By 
JAMES S. KIRTLEY, D. D. 


Author of 


“That Boy of Yours,”’ “ That Young Man and Himeelf,”’ 
‘* Twenty-six Days with Jesus” 


PHILADELPHIA 
THE JUDSON PRESS 

BOSTON CHICAGO LOS ANGELES 

KANSAS CITY SEATTLE TORONTO 


GRNRY OF PRINCETG 
YY. 


MAR 2 1999 
aS 
Pine, pe ar Aes 










Copyright, 1920, by 
GILBERT N. BRINK, Sscrerary 


Copyright, 1926, by 
THE JUDSON PRESS 





Published, November, 1920 
Reissued, March, 1926 


PRINTED IN U,S. A. 


DEDICATED 
TO 
MY CHILDREN 


George, Adelaide, Bess 





FOREWORD 


I HAVE embodied in these fifteen chapters much 
of what I have said to members of the church in 
personal conversations, in brief talks, and in more 
elaborate addresses. Many good brethren have 
urged me to put it all in book form and several 
Assemblies, Associations, Conferences, and Con- 
ventions have taken formal action requesting the 
publication of several of the addresses, especially 
the ones on the Baptist Distinctive and the Bap- 
tist Objective. The two last mentioned have been 
reconstructed and elaborated for this volume. 
It would be useless to take the space at this 
point to state the many and very vital reasons 
why every member of our churches should grasp 
all the principles, ideals, and practices of the faith 
just at this stage of the world’s history. What 
is involved in being a Christian, what is involved 
in being a church-member, what is involved in 
being a Baptist—these are questions of para- 
mount concern. ‘The greatest triumphs in the 
history of Christianity are triumphs in which 
Baptists have participated as no other body of 


Foreword 





Christians has; but far greater triumphs await us 
if we are as wise in the coming day and genera- 
tion as we have been in the past. 

I have what seems a reasonable hope, that many 
members of our churches in the United States 
and Canada will read this effort to answer the 
questions mentioned above, and that many pas- 
tors and other leaders will find it a suitable text- 
book for classes in the study of these essentials 
in the religion of today and of the coming day. 


CONTENTS 


1PM RAD SL 
paid a A CHURCH-MEMBER spied 
I. BECOMING A CHRISTIAN ........... B 
PI OINING) THE) CHURCH ING s... esse creer: II 
PART II 
Wuat You FOUND IN THE CHURCH 
PeANOTHER | GEREMONY i. estercielc nici tines 29 
IT. A BroTHERHOOD ....... Subeeedes 36 
DLN SO RGANISM As cao atyeha: Miley an Loe 42 
IV. AccUMULATED TREASURES ......... 52 
Wee EO DAPTIST: DISTINCTIVEY ..cuiasiste are 56 
ViEsbae DAPTIST| OBJECTIVE 22002 0)05% 96 
VII. INSTRUMENTALITIES AND AGENCIES .. 123 


PART OUT 

Your PART 
PEMA TRY OUPARE,.TOSLIO) Saye tee. tiaie Rae 

. THE POWERS WITH Wuicu You 

NG) RR a pe Dies i de UY Sheer 139 
THE POWER FROM ABOVE. TEE Hea 150 
MILOWETO. GEToTHATIPOWER) occa eis c 155 
. SOME THINGS THAT HELP ......... 169 


. DIFFICULTIES AND ENCOURAGEMENTS. 176 


* 
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Nate 
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a4 


PART I 


A CHURCH-MEMBER 





I 
BECOMING A CHRISTIAN 


You are now a Christian, a follower of Christ; 
but you were not always so. You were born in- 
nocent of any sin, but with inherent possibilities 
of sinning and with inherent possibilities of be- 
coming a Christian. And you became a Christian. 


1. How? 


1. It came about in the same way in which all 
the millions of Christians of the present and of 
the past became such: through a personal choice 
of Christ, made by yourself and for yourself, not 
made by some one else for you, but by you alone. 
Others may have chosen him for you and urged 
him upon you, may have helped you to under- 
stand, resolve, and act, but not till you chose him 
for yourself did you become a Christian. 

Perhaps you had special help from the home. 
You may have been brought up so well, with 
Christ so dominant over the thoughts and ideals 
and interests and atmosphere of the home, that 
you fell under his influence without resistance or 
effort or hesitation or fear. You fell in with the 
ways of the home-makers as if they were your 
own from the beginning. Almost unconsciously 
you adopted their habits. You took over their 
religion by the instinct of imitation with which 


[3] 


You and Your Church 


you had been endowed by nature. But there 
came a time when you felt that Christ must be 
the direct source of your own life as well as of 
theirs, and you made him your Saviour and Mas- 
ter as he was theirs, by the same sort of choice 
that they had once made. Then you began to 
form your own habits apart from theirs, dealing 
personally and directly with God through Christ, 
though still under the influence of those to whom 
you owed so much and still full of appreciation 
of them. You had felt your own need of him. 
There was no radical change in your life because 
there was so little to be changed. Your habits 
were right, there had been no development of any 
bad possibilities within you; but now Christ was 
at the center, and you would grow like him in- 
stead of growing like your parents. You have 
made this choice so early in life that you can say, 
as I have heard so many say, that you cannot re- | 
member the time when you were not a Christian. 
Perhaps young Timothy is a case in point. (Acts 
16 : 1-3.) Your sense of sinfulness was not so 
acute at the first as it has since grown, for you 
will be discovering all the time how weak and 
liable you are to commit sin, sin of the thought 
or imagination or feeling or act. 

On the other hand, you may have grown up in 
an environment in which you were not made to 
think of Christ in a personal way, and you grew 
in the wrong direction, whether you went into a 
life of much sinning or not, and, when the sense 
of need seized you, it was a very pungent sense 


Tua 


Becoming a Christian 





of sinfulness and lostness. You recall the struggle 
you had with yourself before you could yield 
your will to his, or the way you groped about 
searching for him, crying to him to have mercy 
on you, when you did not know that his heart 
was even then overflowing with mercy and that 
he was trying to get your attention centered on 
his mercy and his strength so that he could save 
you. Youcan never tell how glad you were when 
you looked and lived and felt the sense of pardon 
and cleansing. You experienced what is told in 
John 3: 14-18. 

Or, possibly you are one of those who have 
gone deeply into sin, and you had an awakening 
which threw you into agony till at last Jesus 
spoke to your troubled soul, as he spoke to the 
waves of the sea, and said, ‘‘ Peace, be still.” It 
was like going from a cemetery into a banquet 
hall, from Cimmerian darkness into'a land of 
rainbows. It had some elements like the ex- 
perience of Saul of Tarsus (Acts 9) or of the 
Philippian jailer. (Acts 16 : 19-34.) 

You may even have gone so far as to commit 
some sin which humanity pronounces incurable, 
a sin with which only the stern laws of man can 
deal. There are many people in trouble to whom 
there is absolutely no way out but through the 
door of Christ’s forgiving and cleansing and in- 
spiring heart, and the laws of nature and of man 
must simply take their course. Such are the 
libertine, the murderer, the dope-fiend, the thief. 
I have in mind some men and even women who 


[5] 


You and Your Church 





were blackened by the most revolting sins and © 
even crimes, who are now rejoicing in a Saviour’s 
redeeming work. The scars will mark them for- 
ever, but they will also mark them as brands 
snatched from the burning. Take the case of 
the robber crucified with Jesus. (Luke 23 : 39- 
43.) Take the case of some eminent workers 
all over the country. Read again Paul’s list of 
the signs of depravity in 1 Corinthians, chapter 
6, and hear him say: “ And such were some of 
you; but ye were washed, but ye were sanctified, 
but ye were justified in the name of the Lord 
Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God.” 

The point is that, whichever class you belonged 
to, you became a Christian in the same way that 
every other one followed, and that was by a 
choice of Christ which brought him with his 
transforming and directing grace into your heart. 
You made the choice, whether quietly, as did 
Lydia and the Ethiopian treasurer and millions 
more, or amid upheaval and agony, as did Saul 
and the jailer and millions of others. 

2. Yet you became a Christian in a way dif- 
ferent from that of any other one that ever lived, 
for the simple reason that you are different from 
anybody else in the world, different from any one 
that ever did or ever will live, different in tem- 
perament, training, outlook, stage of experience, 
ways of feeling, thinking, and doing. Sometimes 
inquirers think they must become Christians just 
as other Christians say they did, even to the very 
circumstances and all the emotions. My own 


[6] 


Becoming a Christian 


conversion at the age of sixteen was very vivid, 
with intense sense of need and with great joy 
when at last I apprehended Christ as my loving 
Saviour. A cousin of mine made the choice so 
early that she was not at all aware, at the time, of 
the vast significance of that choice, not aware of 
much difference after her acceptance of Christ. 
But the new life began at that point. 

Then let me say again, that the two essentials 
in your becoming a Christian are, first, a sense 
of need, and, secondly, a reliance on Christ as 
Saviour, Teacher, Master, Guide, Friend; not 
trust for salvation in parents or teacher or minis- 
ter or church, though you did not lack confidence 
in them, but confidence in Christ to do for you 
and with you what none of the others nor all 
combined could do. When you took him as your 
Saviour it was through that action of the soul 
which we call faith, trust, confidence, belief, and 
we sometimes illustrate it by the physical senses 
of touch, sight, taste, and the like. The sense 
of need we call conviction; the change of attitude 
toward sin we call repentance; the turning to him 
with reliance we call faith—all just as simple as 
it could be. 

Your conversion was just like all others in the 
essentials, but unlike all others just as you are 
unlike other people. 


2. Agencies 
Perhaps I should say the “instruments and 
agencies’ that led you to make that choice. It 


[7] 


You and Your Church 





is important to go over them for reasons that 
must be at once quite obvious. It will guide 
you in your attitude toward those agencies, and 
it will enable you to employ them in the interest 
of others. 

Perhaps it was example, the example of some 
one who made you feel that you must be just 
such a Christian as that person, and you saw 
clearly that Jesus was the source of his life and 
must become the source of your goodness. 

Or it may be that some one who knew your 
need made a distinct and purposed appeal to you 
that God used in awakening in you a sense of 
that need, till you saw that you were “ without 
hope and without God in the world.” 

Or it may have come simply from reading 
some awakening passage of the Bible that gripped 
you and held you till you could yield to Christ. 
(Such as John 3 : 16;Matt. 11 > 28-203; Actes 
L7. 3.30, 3. Rom 5 eli 27Cotnwiy aah ow 

Perhaps it was a sermon you heard, like the 
words which reached Tom Nowell’s ears from 
the old sailors’ chaplain, whom he had heard 
many a time, and had scorned, but now stopped 
and listened to him for a moment as he was speak- 
ing on the street corner in Seattle and telling the 
delinquents before him that if they would kneel 
down and honestly ask God to do what was 
possible for them, there was hope for every one 
of them. Tom reached a sudden determination 
and, hastening back to the opium-joint in which 
he had been lying for days in a cocaine stupor, 


[8] 


Becoming a Christian 


he kneeled down and put himself in God’s hands 
and rose a new man. 

It may have been the thought of another’s 
doom, as was the case with Adoniram Judson. 
He had graduated at Brown University, but he 
was not a Christian. He was traveling through 
the country, and stopped for the night at an inn. 
During the night he heard the moaning of a sick 
man in an adjoining room and, on inquiring, 
learned that it was an old University friend of 
his who was dying. Judson exclaimed, ‘“ Dying 
and lost!’ That was the thought which awak- 
ened him and led him to seek his Saviour. 

Or there may have been some special view of 
the Christ whose heart was made to suffer be- 
cause of your sins, as Saul of Tarsus caught a 
vision of Christ and heard him say, “ Why per- 
secutest thou me?”’ 

But whatever the means by which it was done, 
your acceptance of Christ was brought about 
by the Spirit of God, who used the means to 
gain your attention and fix it on Christ, “the 
Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the 
world,” just as he is now using you and your 
efforts and your influence to get the attention of 
others who need Christ as you did. It is the 
Spirit who convicted you of sins. (John 16 : 8- 
11.) It is he who gave you rebirth in Christ. 

Now you are a Christian, leading the most 
blessed life ever known or dreamed of, whether 
you are aware of all its blessedness or not, 
whether you are realizing all of its possibilities 


[9] 


You and Your Church 


or not. Here are some passages of Scripture 
which tell you some important things about the 
life you are living: Matthew 5 :: 3-11; 13; 
Romans 4 : 6-8; 2 Corinthians 4: 6; 1 John 5: 
2; Revelation 21 to 22; Proverbs 4 : 18, 19. 


[10] 


II 
JOINING THE CHURCH 


I. Wuy You Di It 


There was just one reason: you chose to do so. 
You had help in making that choice, but no one 
compelled you to make it. 

There are three reasons why you made the 
choice: 


1. You Wanted To 


Something within you prompted you. The 
very thing you wanted to do was to join the 
church. Even if no one had suggested it, you 
would have thought of it yourself, and if there 
had been no church to join, you would have won- 
dered why there was not and would have been 
inclined to originate something of the sort your- 
self. 

(1) It was an instinct of the new Christian 
nature to want to be associated with the rest of 
the followers of Christ because they and you 
were alike, had passed through the same experi- 
ence, had the same interests, sustained the same 
relation to Christ. You were born into the house- 
hold of faith when you were born again. “ Birds 
of a feather flock together ’—it was something 
like that. 


[ 11 | 


You and Your Church 


ba ere al 


(2) There was a new tie binding you to them, 
the ligament of life, the new life in Christ. You 
felt the pull of it and have been feeling it ever 
since. It worked, whether you were conscious 
of it or not, whether you were working or rest- 
ing or eating or thinking. 

(3) There was born a new ambition in your 
soul, the ambition to impart what you had, even 
your innermost experience, an instinct to share 
all that you had, to pass it on as designed for 
others all the more because it had blessed you, 
as Paul wrote to the Romans, “ I long to see you, 
that I may impart unto you some spiritual gift ” 
(Rom. 1: 11). That ambition was correlated 
to that which became the new law of your life, 
the law of service. 

(4) You found a new motive in your heart, 
the motive of love. Love always corresponds to 
relationships, and there is a love exactly suited to — 
any relationship into which you were born or 
may establish yourself. There is never any con- 
flict between the different kinds of love when 
the relationships. are rightly established and 
maintained; in fact, they intensify each other. 
You love your father all the more for loving 
your husband or wife or child or brother or 
sister or neighbor. 

But here is a new variety of love, the love of 
Christians for each other, just as the love of 
brothers and sisters and all the rest is rudimen- 
tary in us when we are born into this life. This 
love is born in us when we are “ born again.” 


[12] 


¢ 


Joining the Church 


Of course, it must be cultivated and will suffer 
from neglect, but it is there at the start of the 
Christian life. It is called “ love of the brethren,” 
“brotherly love,’ and ‘“ Christian love.” In ac- 
cepting Christ you accepted all whom he had 
accepted. In coming into your heart he brought 
in all his friends with him. He brought that 
new love from heaven with him, and he trans- 
plants it into our hearts. A new variety of car- 
nation was produced some years ago and a rich 
man in the East is said to have paid thirty thou- 
sand dollars for it. This new love added to all 
the other varieties is priceless. Paul speaks of it 
when he writes to the Thessalonians: ‘ For, as 


concerning love of the brethren, ye have no need 


that one write unto you; for ye yourselves are 
taught of God to love one another” (1 Thess. 
4:9). Asa suitable love for the natural brother 
is born in you, so this love for the Christian 
brother is implanted in you when you are born 
again. It prompted you to join the church where 
the others were. 

(5) Gratitude also prompted you to seek the 
church and Christian people. It was through 
them you had been brought to Christ—through 
the work and worship and efforts of their church, 
their prayers for you, their influence over you, 
their instructions. You felt that the church as 
a whole, as well as definite individuals, had had 
some part in leading you to the great decision. 
You wanted to show your gratitude by telling 
them so, by being with them, by doing something 


[ 13 ] 


You and Your Church 


for them, and by helping them do for others 
what they had done for you. 

(6) Self-interest of an unselfish sort led you 
to seek the church. You felt your need of other 
Christians. Their fellowship and friendship 
would strengthen and safeguard you; your heart 
would find rest among them; your judgment 
would be confirmed in its convictions by them; 
your spiritual needs required a home and a home 
love—a thing you felt very keenly, even before 
you tried to understand the full meaning of the 
hunger you had for this company and companion- 
ship. 

Some of the members did not attract you by 
their natural gifts or their attainments; but there 
was one respect in which they all seemed attrac- 
tive: they all belonged to Christ, they represented 
Christ, even though they may not have done so 
with satisfaction to you or to themselves. 


2. The People in the Church Wanted You to Join 


(1) They had the same interest in you that 
you had in them. They wanted you with them 
as much as you wanted to be with them. 

(2) You were, in a true sense, the child of the 
church, and they had that sort of love for you. 
They wanted to do still more for you, and they 
knew they could not do very much for you while 
you were on the outside. 

(3) They knew from experience what you 
needed and knew far better than you did what 
you would lose if you failed to join them. 


[14] 


Joining the Church 


(4) They had a desire for self-preservation, 
which increased their desire to have you come in, 
for they knew that, if those whom they led to 
Christ did not join, the church would soon cease 
to exist, and there would be no more cooperative 
effort for the salvation of others from sins. 

(5) They needed you and knew it, felt it, 
needed you to help them win others to Christ. It 
is a delight to them to have new coworkers in 
that blessed enterprise. 

(6) The bond that bound them to you, the 
bond of the new life in Christ, was felt just as 
keenly by them as by you; the law of the new 
life in Christ, the law of service, is the law under 
which they think of you and they would serve 
you; the motive of the new life, the motive of 
love, is one they feel keenly and constantly. The 
-church would atmosphere and motivate your life. 


3. Christ Wanted You to Join 


(1) He knew that your nature required that 
you get into the group with the rest of the dis- 
ciples. He knew that, with your inclination to 
get with them and their inclination to have you 
with them, there would be a getting together any- 
how and that, unless he took charge of it, there 
would be serious blunders. He arranged for it in 
the very best possible way. 

(2) He knew how important it 1s that you 
confess him, and he planned it so that you could 
do so in the most effective manner. There is a 
value in confessing him. He knew all about that, 


[15] 


You and Your Church 


and he would not let you miss it. In confessing 
him you had your experience of him made more 
vivid and enduring, you brightened the experi- 
ences of others, and you made a direct appeal to 
those who were not then Christians. It tested 
your fidelity to him and was your testimony to 
his power. It gratified Christ and made it pos- 
sible for him to confess you in the presence of 
his Father and the holy angels. (Matt. 10: 
32, 33-) . 

(3) He knew how important it was that you 
be properly classified. ‘There is a chapter in 
Drummond’s “ Natural Law in the Spiritual 
World” on the subject of the significance of 
classification that everybody should read. In be- 
ing classified with your own people, you are re- 
enforced with what they have, you are protected 
with their strength, you are at once a preacher, ~ 
using their voice. Confession crystallizes the 
sentiments; classification with other Christians 
socializes them. 

(4) He wanted to see you cared for. Not till 
children may grow up just as well outside as 
inside the family and the home will it ever be 
possible for Christians to be just as good outside 
the church as inside. Flowers may grow along 
the roadside and still be flowers, but they do a 
great deal better in a well-cultivated garden. No 
one wants to ask the question whether he can 
live a Christian life without confessing Christ 
and becoming classified with his people, but you 
simply ask, What does Christ think about it and 


[ 16 | 


Joining the Church 


what does he wish? There is a sense in which 
the church is a home and a school and a hospital, 
but the purpose is to make home-makers and 
teachers and soldiers out of those who enter. 

(5) He wanted you to be made one with the 
others, socialized, brigaded with them, to use one 
of our military terms. He is building a body 
out of the total of his disciples. There are three 
striking symbols of that body. One is the human 
body. He is the head, and we are the members. 
The head does the thinking and directs the ac- 
tivities of the body, using the members as it will, 
but it depends on the body to execute its thoughts 
and plans. Another figure is that of the vine 
and its branches. The vine is the source of life 
and fruitfulness to the branches, all the vitality 
and all the material for leaves and fruit coming 
up from the roots through the trunk line; but the 
vine is dependent on the branches to manifest that 
life and bear the fruit. A third impressive figure 
is that of a building and its foundation or corner- 
stone. Christ is the foundation of faith and life, 
“and other foundation can no man lay,” but the 
stones laid on it are similar to it, are “living 
stones,’ and all together they “ grow into a liv- 
ing temple,” “a spiritual house.” 

In thus unifying you with others he has done 
these two things for you: (a) he has been indi- 
vidualizing you, has made you more yourself 
than if you had been allowed to “ run wild” out 
in the world. A hand is not less a hand because 
it is a part of the whole body, but rather is made 


[17] 


You and Your Church 





more distinctive by being one of many members 
of the same body. Its functions have been set 
off against those of the foot and the ear and the 
eye. If there were no foot the hand would try 
to be a foot too, and that is never a very suc- 
cessful way of utilizing the hand. Your own 
traits and activities are delimited by association 
with others, and your individuality is developed 
as it could not be if you were alone. 

(b) He has been socializing you. That is, he 
makes you part of the body. It is a hand work- 
ing with foot and ear and eye and nose. The 
result is that he reenforces you with all the other 
members and reenforces them with you. The 
strength of the hand is imparted to all the other 
members either in its structural relations with 
them or in the ministry it seeks to render to them. 
Responsibilities make you both more yourself . 
and more theirs. 

As a result of that socialization your life func- 
tions in new ways, achieves new products. One 
function is that of united prayer. Jesus knew 
what was possible in that line, for he says: “ If 
two of you shall agree on earth as touching any- 
thing which they shall ask, it shall be done for 
them by my Father who is in heaven. For 
where two or three are gathered together in my 
name, there am I in the midst of them” (Matt. 
18: 19, 20). In Acts 2 and 3 we see how this 
common and persistent prayer together preceded 
and prepared for the coming of the Spirit on the 
Day of Pentecost. 


[ 18 | 


Joining the Church 


Worship becomes a new thing, a composite of 
the adoration of many souls. Your walk with 
them is a march, a drill, a social advance upward. 
Your work is your own part of the common task 
that blends the spirits of the workers in the prod- 
uct. It is a united attack on sin and a united 
building of the structure of society. You de- 
velop the possibilities of a nature that has the 
multitudinous element in it. 

The result within you is the development of the 
three great elemental Christian impulses, love of 
the brethren, obedience to Christ, and the spirit 
of serving. 

The method by which he had you make that 
confession was in itself designed by him to pre- 
serve the experiences of the soul and proclaim 
them, thereby intensifying and imparting them. 
Of course there was a ceremony. We are so 
constituted that some sort of formula is needed 
as a means of symbolizing something and com- 
mitting us to something. The greatest event in 
the history of the world was the death and resur- 
rection of Jesus; the greatest experience you 
ever had was your experience in choosing him 
as your Saviour and Teacher and Master, and 
thereby dying to the past and rising to the future; 
the greatest hope you cherish for the future is 
that of the resurrection of the body. Well, Jesus 
put all three of these into a symbol that met you 
at the door of the church. The purpose of bap- 
tism was to set forth in a symbol those three ex- 
periences of resurrection. Jesus was wondrously 


[19 ] 


You and Your Church 


wise in arranging it so. You preached the gospel, 
saying in a living tableau, ‘‘ This is what saved 
me, the death and resurrection of Christ.” You 
told your experience in the same way, as you 
said, without a spoken word, “ This is how it 
saved me, by my death to the past with its sins 
and my resurrection to the future with its sal- 
vation.”’ You also proclaimed your hope of a 
future resurrection of the body in that same way. 
(Rom. 6 : 3-5.) 

Jesus arranged all of that with a view to giving 
you pleasure, impressing all who saw it that he 
died for our sins and rose for our justification, 
and that we may die to sin and rise to a new life. 
So we see that the ceremony at the church door 
did not destroy anything that was in your ex- 
perience, but expressed and confirmed and en- 
larged it all. . 

We can imagine his joy in seeing you confess 
him. 


II.. How You JoINnep 


You will recall three things: 


1. Your Confession 


It was your confession, not of yourself, but 
of your Saviour; not of your goodness, but of 
his; not of your faith, but of the Saviour in 
whom your faith rested; not of your purposes, 
but of the Saviour whom you purposed to love 
and trust and serve. You confessed him as a 
Saviour whom you actually trusted for salvation, 


[ 20 ] 


Joining the Church 


for teaching, for guidance. You became a Chris- 
tian when you made the inner decision to accept 
Christ. The will acted on the matter. That 
settled it. Then you confessed Christ. 

You may have had much emotion and you may 
have had very little. That is a matter of tem- 
perament, or experience, or circumstances, or all 
combined. Many people take that decision 
quietly, like Lydia, “whose heart the Lord 
opened, that she attended unto the things which 
were spoken by Paul” (Acts 16 : 14)—whose 
heart the Lord opened like a flower as the sun 
calls it to awake—or like the Ethiopian treasurer 
who leaned upon Jesus and took his hand and 
was saved. Others are awakened with a storm of 
sorrow, like the jailer at Philippi (Acts 16), or 
like Paul himself on that mad, wild ride to 
Damascus. (Acts 9. ) 

All you needed in joining the church was to 
give evidence that you had actually accepted 
Christ and intended to live as his follower—just 
that, nothing more. The rest would come in the 
path of duty and service. You did not join the 
church to become a Christian, but to lead a Chris- 
tian life. It was not through the church to 
Christ, but through Christ into the church, 


2. Your Acceptance by the Church for Member- 
ship 
In some churches they ask candidates for mem- 


bership to meet the deacons, or a standing com- 
mittee, who make some private investigation and 


[21] 


You and Your Church 





then bring the case before the church in a public 
way. In other churches the habit is to invite the 
candidate to come before the whole church in the 
first instance and make the statement in public. 
The vote of the church settles the matter, in 
either case. 


3. Your Baptism 


In your careless days you may have thought 
of baptism as a singular, almost grotesque thing, 
about which people could make humorous re- 
marks quite easily. But, when you came to be 
baptized, it was a most unique experience. It 
did not save you or give you the consciousness of 
being a Christian—it could not; but it did give 
you the consciousness of having done your Mas- 
ter’s will so far. It told in a living tableau what 
did save you and how it saved you and what you. 
hoped for in the future. Jesus was wonderfully 
wise in giving us only two ordinances and in put- 
ting into those ordinances as in a mold the whole 
content of the gospel. 

At this point it may be well to say something 
about the form of baptism. I have taken its 
real form for granted in all my allusions to it up 
to this point and, in the chapter on The Great 
Distinctive, I give the historical story of the way 
the form came to be changed. 

If you were asked, What is the form of bap- 
tism? you could answer that there is only one 
way to find out: Go to the dictionary as you 
would in looking up any other word. In this 


[ 22 ] 


| Joining the Church 





case you would have to go to the Greek diction- 
ary, as the words “ baptize’ and “ baptism ”’ are 
not English words. They were baptizo and bap- 
tisma in Greek, one the verb telling the doing, 
and the other the noun telling what is done. 
These words were not translated into our lan- 
guage, they were only transferred and their final 
syllables adapted to our language. When we 
go, then, to the various Greek dictionaries, or 
lexicons, as they are called, we find that the 
twenty odd dictionaries are perfectly agreed in 
saying that the verb baptize means to dip, to 
plunge, to overwhelm, to immerse. They also say 
that there is a distinct verb for sprinkle, rantizo; 
also one for pour, ekcheo; and that their meanings 
are always separate. For this ordinance which 
we call baptism, of course there is only the one 
word used. That is the reason we always say 
baptism. If the word for sprinking, or pouring, 
was ever used when reference was made to the 
ordinance, we could not take it over into our lan- 
guage by the term baptism, but would have to say 
rantism or use the word for pour. 

That strictly settles the matter. But there are 
several subsidiary ways of confirming the find- 
ings of the dictionaries. 

In support of the meaning of the words bap- 
tizo and baptisma—“ baptize’ and “ baptism,” as 
we say in English—you have only to note the 
circumstances connected with the administration 
of the ordinance. John was baptizing, and the 
people came to him, and “ they were baptized by 


[ 23 ] 


You and Your Church 


him in the river Jordan” (Matt. 3: 6). “ Jesus 
came from Nazareth, and was baptized of John 
in the Jordan. And straightway coming up out 
of the ‘water’ (Mark 1 <0, 10). > Andwiomm 
also was baptizing in Atnon, near to Salim, be- 
cause there was much water there” (John 3: 
23). The Ethiopian treasurer “ went down into 
the water”? and “came up out of the water” 
(Acts Si sous): 

Another confirmation is found in the signifi- 
cance of the ordinance itself asa symbol. I have 
already spoken of what it was given for and its 
symbolic character. Read Romans 6 : 3-5 about 
being “ buried with him by baptism into death.”’ 

In his “ Spirit of Christianity ’’ Hegel thus re- 
fers to baptism: “ John’s custom of immersing 
his disciples in water was an important symbol. 


There is no feeling so homogeneous to the desire © 


for the infinite as the desire to be buried in water. 
The one who plunges in faces a foreign element 
that at once completely surrounds him and makes 
itself felt at every point of his body. He has 
only felt water, that touches him where he is, and 
he is only where he feels it. There is no hole in 


the water, no limitation, no variety or definite-— 


ness. The feeling of it is the most unscattered 
and simple. The immersed person comes out into 
the light, separates himself from the water, is 
divided from it and yet drips from it all around. 
As it leaves him the world takes on form again, 
and he steps back strengthened into the manifold 
state of consciousness again. While he was im- 


[ 24 | 


Joining the Church 





mersed he had but one feeling ; the world was for- 
gotten, and he was in a solitude that had cast 
everything away, unwound itself from every- 
thing. Baptism was a getting out of the past, and 
an enthusiastic consecration to a new world.” 

Still another is the practice of the early Chris- 
tians and the curious way in which sprinkling 
and pouring came to be adopted as substitutes. 
A full account of that is given in the chapter on 
The Great Distinctive. Ancient art preserves the 
evidence in the old baptisteries. 

While these several confirmations of the real 
form of baptism are interesting and pleasing, 
they are really not required. The meaning of the 
word is established by the dictionaries so fully 
that no competent scholar claims that sprinkling 
and pouring are anything but substitutes for real 
baptism, though many seek to justify the con- 
tinued use of the substitutes. The grounds on 
which they do so are wholly at variance with 
true reasoning and, if the matter were not so seri- 
ous, they would often be ludicrous in the extreme. 


[25 ] 





PART II 


WHAT YOU FOUND IN THE 
CHURCH 


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I 
ANOTHER CEREMONY 


THE Lorp’s SUPPER 


1. What It Is 


It is a supper of bread and wine, to be eaten 
by the disciples at intervals. It is not a full meal 
or an effort to gratify hunger and thirst. In fact, 
it is not needed for physical strength or refresh- 
ing, but for the good of the soul. A pinch of 
the bread and a sip of the wine are enough. 


2. What It Means 


Bread stands as the type of all kinds of food, 
and the juice of the grape is representative of 
all invigorating beverages. The two, then, are 
symbols of what sustains the soul. The real Sus- 
tainer of the soul is Christ. Long before he es- 
tablished the ordinance he told the people that. 
He said: “ I am the bread which came down out 
of heaven”; “I am the bread of life”; “ your 
fathers ate manna in the wilderness and died. 
This is the bread which cometh down out of 
heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die. 
I am the living bread which came down out of 
heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall 
live forever” (John 6: 41-51). He is also the 


[ 29 ] 


You and Your Church 


living water. To the woman at the well he said, 
“Tf thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is 
that saith to thee, Give me to drink, thou 
wouldest have asked of him, and he would have 
given thee living water” (John 4: 10). “If 
any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink ” 
(John 7 : 37). The bread and the wine are the 
two symbols of his life, and together they give 
the complete idea of him as the one source and 
sustenance of our life. As we partake of them 
in a physical way, so we partake of him in a 
spiritual way. 

But the bread must be broken and the wine 
poured out before they can be taken into the sys- 
tem. So his body has been broken by the ham- 
mer of hate and his veins have been opened that 
his life might be given up as well as given out for 
us, then given to us, then reproduced in us. 

There is a close connection between these two 
ceremonies, baptism and the Supper. The two 
complete one great idea. Baptism symbolizes the 
emergence of the soul into new life in Christ; 
the Supper symbolizes the feeding of that new 
life on him, the “ hidden manna,” the “ bread 
of heaven.” As birth takes place only once and 
is followed by frequently taking what nourishes 
life, so baptism comes once for all, while the 
Supper comes at intervals to signify that the life 
must be constantly nourished. “ As oft as ye eat 
this bread, and drink this cup, ye do show forth 
the Lord’s death till he come.’’ We shall keep it 
up “ till he comes.” 


[ 30 ] 


Another Ceremony 


3. How Observe It 


Paul says we must do it “worthily.”’ That 
floes not raise the question of whether you are 
worthy either of the gift of life or of the ordi- 
nance which symbolizes his care of that life by the 
gift and impartation of himself, for you are not 
worthy and never will consider yourself worthy, 
yet you will strive to become worthy. But the 
way you observe this Supper may be an entirely 
worthy or unworthy way. The Corinthians did 
it very unworthily, because they thought of it as 
a regular feast to which they could come and 
eat all the bread they wanted and drink all the 
wine they could get hold of. So Paul tells them 
to “examine yourselves” and see that you have 
the right idea about it. The “worthy” way is 
to discern the symbol within the substance, eat 
and drink knowing what it is for, and respond to 
its meaning. 


4. Wrong Views 


There have been wrong views developed. Of 
course. That’s the way we have done with al- 
most everything God has given us. What gift 
of his have we not perverted both in our views 
and in our use of it? 

One wrong view is that the bread and the wine, 
under the invocation of the one who administers 
it, becomes the veritable, actual body and blood 
of Christ. How this perversion came about will 
be discussed more fully in the chapter on The 


[31] 


You and Your Church 


Great Distinctive. Both baptism and the Sup- 
per came to be regarded as saving rather than 
symbolic ordinances. Heathen who came into 
the church in the very early days brought that 
idea, and they also brought the idea of a sacred 
order called priests, who were necessary in admin- 
_ istering the ordinances and gave to them a magi- 
cal power. This is the teaching of the Roman 
Catholic Church, and they call it transubstantia- 
tion. ‘That is, the substance is changed, under the 
blessing of the priest, into the actual body and 
blood of Christ. That is the chief reason why 
the priest drinks the wine, for it would not do 
to spill a single drop of it, as might happen in 
passing it around among the people, while the 
people eat the bread because there is not so much 
danger of losing any of it. 

When Jesus said of the broken bread, “ This is 
my body,” and of the wine, “ This is my blood, 
which is shed for many, for the remission of 
sins,’ he used a very familiar figure of speech 
which we call a metaphor. If he had said, “ This 
is like my body,” etc., it would have been a 
simile, which is an expanded metaphor. But the 
metaphor is an implied or unexpanded simile and 
means exactly the same as if it had been ex- 
panded. 

There is another view called consubstantiation. 
This was the view of Luther, who denied that the 
bread and wine were changed into the veritable 
body and blood of Jesus, but affirmed that his 
“real presence ” was there “in, with, and under 


[ 32 | 


Another Ceremony 





the bread and wine,” and that it was a means 
of grace because you actually partook of him. 
When told that Christ was only at the right hand 
of God, he replied that the right hand of God 
was anywhere and everywhere. 

John Calvin modified that view somewhat by 
saying that, while the bread and wine are signs 
of the body and blood of Christ, they are the in- 
strumental means of his presence, and the Supper 
is therefore a means of grace. 

Zwingli was nearer the true view in saying 
that ‘the Supper is a memorial or remembrance 
of the sacrifice offered once for all by Christ, and 
that it is not a continuance or repetition of the 
original sacrifice of Christ, as taught by the 
Roman Church, and by Luther and Calvin in a 
modified way, also by some others. 

Thus we see that what is known as sacramen- 
talism changes the two ordinances to be some- 
thing entirely different from what Christ de- 
signed them to be. That view is held by the 
Church of England as well as by the other 
churches referred to. Sacramentalism is usually 
wrapped up in what is known as sacerdotalism, 
the existence of a sacred order in whom the 
church really centers, so that the institution and 
the official are so necessary to Chritianity that it 
cannot exist apart from them. Everything is 
created by the successors of the apostles, and the 
ordinances are the channels through which God’s 
grace flows to the people; the bishop is the succes- 
sor of the apostles; the priest is ordained by him; 


[ 33 | 


You and Your Church 


without the priest there cannot be full worship 
of God; the sacraments, baptism, and the Lord’s 
Supper, are the means that must create and main- 
tain the spiritual life. Baptism is “the great 
sacrament of our regeneration,’ and the Supper, 
or Eucharist as it is termed, “ our chief means 
of communion with our Lord.” As R. J. Camp- 
bell puts it, “ The incarnation, the atonement, the 
extension of both in the sacraments, the ministry 
which guards them, and the visible society itself 
as the sphere of sacrificial grace—all these seem 
to me to imply each other.” 

All of which is foreign to the simplicity of 
the gospel. The ordinances are not sacraments in 
any such sense. They cannot save. They can- 
not constitute a channel through which the grace 
of God is extended to us. Such an idea shock- 
ingly “limits the universality of divine grace,” 
as Doctor Fairbairn points out, and conditions 
the grace by imperfect men. 

In order to observe the Supper properly you 
should prepare for it. You do that by mentally 
seeing the fact that Christ died for you, and this 
vivid object-lesson of our sustenance by him is 
only a dull hint of the glory that is in the actual 
experience. The object-lesson keeps the truth 
clear in the mind, appeals to the heart for its 
gratitude and devotion, and stimulates the reso- 
lution to become more worthy of it all. 

You prepare for it by your experience in living 
by him and doing his will. That stimulates the 
hunger and the thirst of the soul and gives a more 


[ 34 ] 


Another Ceremony 


vivid sense of the truths set forth in the symbol. 

In many of our churches a covenant-meeting 
is held at the prayer-meeting preceding the ob- 
servance of the Supper, and at such a meeting the 
thoughts turn toward the essential idea in the 
Supper. That is a good preparation. 

Regularity in attending is the best sort of prep- 
aration. If it should be impossible to attend but 
one meeting in the month, let it be the Com- 
munion service. 


[35] 


Il 
A BROTHERHOOD 


On joining the church, you found yourself in 
the midst of a brotherhood and an actual member 
of it. 

That meant three things: 


1. Kinship 


All the members were your spiritual kin in 
Christ, unless, as may sometimes be the case, 
there was one, here and there, who had not really 
been born again. Wath such possible exceptions, 
you had all been reborn, “not of blood, nor of 
the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but 
of God” (John1 : 13). The source of that new 
life is God, the agent of it is the life-giving Spirit 
of God, and the type after which you were reborn 
is Jesus the Elder Brother. You found a family, 
and you became at once and without any further 
conditions as much a member of that family as 
the oldest and most honored son or daughter. 
Potential childship to God had become actual 
through your vital union with Christ. 

There are several duties that grow out of that 
kinship. First is the duty to get acquainted with 
all your kinsfolk. They are the best people there 


[ 36 ] 


A Brotherhood 


are. They will be an honor to you, even those 
who are not prominent or mighty. Secondly, 
make it easy for them to take you into their fel- 
lowship, and comfortable to them while you are 
in. Do not be offish. Do not wait to be coaxed 
or especially noticed. Thirdly, live up to the 
family ideals and traditions. You are no longer 
isolated. You represent all the others; in fact, 
the whole family. The general estimate of the 
family of faith will depend on the way you rep- 
resent them. If the reputation of that family 
in the community has been lowered by some 
unfortunate or erring member, it will be one of 
your most sacred duties to restore its standing. 
There will always be varieties of view on many 
matters, but the exposure of the home interests to 
outside and prejudiced onlookers will be a most 
dastardly bit of unfaithfulness. Keep the family 
secrets safe. 


2. Equality 


(1) No Privileged Classes. In certain coun- 
tries where they have “ classes ” ordained by law, 
or by custom and tradition, those who are called 
the “ nobility ” constitute the “ privileged class,” 
but there are none in this family, even though 
some may have developed habits at variance with 
the law of equality. When such habits are found, 
they are in violation of Christian principles, and 
are due to the weaknesses and faults which those 
principles are seeking to correct. They violate 
the law of the family of faith. 


[ 37 | 


You and Your Church 


(2) No Distinctions Within the Family. In 
some countries there are distinctions made in 
favor of the firstborn child, called the law of 
primogeniture, under which the oldest son in- 
herits the highest title, a larger part of the estate, 
and the honor of being the family representative 
in a legal and social way. Not so with your 
church. You are just as much a representative 
as the oldest and highest member, and all the 
fame and honors and reputation and influence of 
the family are yours. All of us are equal before 
Christ, the Elder Brother. If the Head of the 
family has any favorites at all, it must be the 
most needy or those who serve most and best. 

(3) No one has authority over your beliefs, 
and you have all the rights and privileges that 
any one else has, even though there may be great 
inequality in talent and attainments and personal 
values. Whatever authority may be invested in 
given officers, it is so invested only for a given 
period and purpose. It comes from God and 
reaches them through the church, and you have 
the same right to say who shall hold the office 
that any other member of the church has. 

(4) Because of that equality there are at least 
two duties to be urged upon you: First, if you 
are superior to any of the others in natural gifts 
and attainments, you must hold those gifts and 
attainments for the benefit of all and must bestow 
them on the others, and not in a grudging or re- 
luctant way, as of necessity, but cheerfully, joy- 
ously, as paying a debt, a debt that grows greater 


[ 38 ] 


A Brotherhood 


with the effort to discharge it. You must recog- 
nize, then, that the others have a right to all you 
know and are and have, in the way of spiritual 
value. Secondly, if you are inferior to any of 
the members in your attainments, it is your right, 
not privilege merely, but right, to avail yourself 
of their gifts and graces and powers and thereby 
enrich and empower yourself. Some of your fel- 
low members may be distinguished intellectually, 
or socially, or for eloquence or skill as religious 
workers, or for personal influence or prominence 
in their callings, but their fame is your fame, their 
honors yours, their worth your worth. 


3. Community of Interests 


You have many things in common besides 
equality of rights and privileges. 

(1) Whatever interests the church as a whole 
has, each member has—evangelistic, educational, 
missionary, benevolent. To each group in the 
church duties are assigned, yet to each group 
belong the interests of the other groups. The 
Sunday school worker is always interested in the 
work of the young people, and the Ladies’ Aid 
is not at all indifferent to the interests of the 
Juniors or the Boys’ Band. Whatever section you 
serve in, you belong to all. Whatever knowledge 
you have, whatever wisdom, it belongs to all. It 
must go to the market-place and not be wrapped 
up in a napkin. You can never learn any truth 
that does not belong to your brethren. (1 Tim. 


6 : 17-19.) 
[ 39 ] 


You and Your Church 


(2) Experiences are held in common, even 
those that are most personal. Your joys and 
sorrows are distributed to your fellow members. 
Even the worst experience and the lack of ex- 
perience are held in common. 

(3) Your very faults belong to the other mem- 
bers. You will learn that one of the most in- 
teresting things about people is their faults. They 
make you feel comfortable. It is almost a plea- 
sure to find that others have faults as well as 
yourself. That fellow feeling makes us won- 
drous kind. You say to yourself, “ He hath but 
stumbled in the path thou hast in weakness trod.” 
The faults of others show you how not to do and 
inspire you to unselfish efforts in their behalf, for 
you have the guardianship of your brothers and 
sisters in Christ and you must help them to mend 
their ways, and do it in a loving, Christlike way. 
They help you to correct your own faults. It 
helps you to cultivate wisdom and tact and good- 
ness. You not only have to live with people who, 
like yourself, have faults, but you have to help 
them overcome. (Gal. 6 : I-3.) 

Now, in view of this community of interest 
with your brethren, here are several very plain 
duties : 

It is of primary importance that you make it 
as easy as possible for them to get along with 
you. “Consider thyself, lest thou also be 
tempted.” 

Learn to do cooperative work, not only with 
the few who are easy toe work with but with even 


[ 40 | 


A Brotherhood 





the most uncongenial and least companionable 
and interesting. 

Master the art of making their interests your 
own and do it without seeming to intrude or to 
regard yourself as their superior. 

Try to become a wise counselor to whom peo- 
ple will come of their own accord, knowing that 
you can be trusted with delicate confidences and 
weighty responsibilities of sympathy. 


4 


[41] 


Til 


AN ORGANISM 


1. An Organization 


In coming into this brotherhood you found not 
a mere aggregation of so many individuals, but 
an organization; not a mob for guerrilla warfare, 
but an army for regular service, coordinated, co- 
operative, and, when in action, “terrible as an 
army with banners’’; not simply so many mem- 
bers of the body called the church, but the body 
itself of which you are a member; not simply 
so many living stones piled up together in im- 
promptu order, or disorder, but all “ growing into 
an holy temple’ whose walls glow with light and 
expand by the laws of the heavenly architecture 
upward and outward; not simply children of the 
Father, but members of the Father’s household, 
“the household of faith.”’ Organization in living 
objects means two things: structure and function. 
Together you and the rest of them form a struc- 
ture, and together you perform functions that re- 
quire more than one person. 


2. An Organism 


It is not only an organization but an organism, 
as implied above. You are not only brought to- 
gether, but “born” together; that is, “ born 


[ 42 ] 


An Organism 





again ” individually into a “together ” spirit and 
destiny ; brought together, not by external power, 
but by the inner pressure of the Spirit of God 
who dwells within you. So the word “ organ- 
ism” seems more apt than the word “ organiza- 
tion,’ for, in all living things, it is life that 
produces organization with its structure and func- 
tions, but organization does not produce life. 
Mechanism means death, while organism means 
organization plus the life that produces it. You 
are in a living body. 

(1) You found that this organism, which we 
call a church, 1s self-directive. Just as all the 
individuals in the group have equal access to God 
and to people, so each group has the same right 
to deal directly with God as any other group. 
There is no body in authority over the group that 
you belong to. 

At this point it will be well to classify the dif- 
ferent types of church government, or polity, 
with which the world is familiar. One is the pre- 
latical, or episcopal type. Episcopos is the Greek 
word which means overseer and is translated 
bishop. An episcopacy means government by 
bishops or grades of officials above the local 
church. There are grades of this sort of gov- 
ernment all the way from the absolute autocracy 
of the Church of Rome, which does not permit its 
members to interpret, and does not really permit 
them to read, the Bible, does all their religious 
thinking for them, and takes complete charge of 
their souls, to the Protestant Episcopal Church, 


[43 ] 


You and Your Church 





in which government comes down to the local 
church from above it, on to the Methodist Church 
where there is more real democracy than in any 
other form of the episcopacy. 

The presbyterial is another form of church 
polity, which is government of the local church 
by elders, the term presbyter being the English 
equivalent of the Greek word presbuieros, 
“elder.” This is an overhead government of 
the local church through its representatives in 
presbyteries. Elder and bishop in the New Tes- 
tament designate one and the same office, each 
indicating a special phase or function of it, the 
term pastor being the one term that covers all 
those functions. 

The third form of government is the congrega- 
tional. Each group governs itself, while many ~ 
groups, which we call local churches, cooperate 
in what we call associations and conventions. 
They organize such bodies and control them, 
are not controlled by them, and they thereby 
carry out their own plans of larger cooperation. 

That was the original form of church govern- 
ment. If each individual has as much right to 
deal with God and his fellow men as any one else, 
so each group of individuals has as much right to 
be self-directive as any other group. There is 
every evidence that the New Testament churches 
were autonomous and that there was room for 
the fullest cooperation of all the congregations. 

The idea has three special considerations in its 
favor, in addition to the fact that the New Tes- 


[44] 


An Organism 





tament churches were independent in their organ- 
ization, democratic, as we may say. First, it is in 
harmony with the most fundamental function of 
the human soul, namely, its right of self-direction. 
No one loses that right in entering a group of 
others that have the same right, nor does that 
group lose its autonomy. Secondly, it is in har- 
mony with the present trend in human develop- 
ment. _ Democracy is the predestined form of 
human government, in State and in Church. 
Thirdly, those who hold to the congregational 
form of government are the ones whose agitation 
has produced those religious revolutions and ref- 
ormations that have resulted in civil democracy 
and freedom over the earth, as well as religious 
liberty. 

The objection has been raised that church de- 
mocracy is too good for human nature, and the 
objection is valid if we think of unregenerate 
human nature, but it is just exactly the thing 
for regenerate men and women. That is the 
only kind of people for membership in any church. 
It has been said that people need a stronger form 
of government to hold them together, but the 
bond of a new life in Christ is mightier than 
any sort of legal or mechanical ties. The liga- 
ments of life and of love are stronger than death 
and sin and all human weakness. A regenerate 
church-membership is fitted for self-government, 
and no other kind is. 

This organization is doing three distinct things 
for you: 


[45 | 


You and Your Church 





First, it is conserving your individuality with 
all its vital powers. A religious paternalism, an 
autocracy, would be a mechanism, even though it 
might be a very powerful one, and you would be 
a cog, or bolt, or some other subordinate part 
in the machine. There is individuality in you, 
and the church preserves and develops that. 
There is a multitudinous element in you, and it 
develops that. There is a hunger in you, and it 
satisfies that. There is a helplessness in you, and 
it energizes that. There is a desire in you to im- 
part, and it provides for that. You are even 
more of an individual than when you came in. 
Yes, it preserves your individuality while social- 
izing you. 

Secondly, it disciplines and nurtures the life. 
It does that by its worship, by its instruction, by 
the watch-care of the stronger over the weaker, 
by the work it provides for you to do in an in- 
dividual way, and especially by the work you do 
in a cooperative way, by the attitude you take to- 
ward the others and toward the world at large, 
and by “the work of faith and labor of love and 
patience of hope” to which it prompts you. It 
suppresses no one but draws you into the high- 
est expression of self and secures the finest dis- 
cipline and development. 

Thirdly, it completes you by socializing you. 
You are associated with people in every stage 
of growth, each “ going on unto perfection, all 
growing into a full-grown man, unto the measure 
of the stature of the fulness of Christ,’ growing 


[ 46 ] 


An Organism 





up ‘in all things unto him who is the head, even 
Christ, from whom all the building fitly framed 
and knit together through that which every joint 
supplieth, according to the working in due mea- 
sure of each several part, maketh the increase of 
the body unto the building up of itself in love”’ 
epi er s5-s16 ). 

(2). In order to be self-directive, this organiza- 
tion has leadership. Not drivership, for there’s 
no place for a driver in the church. Nor does 
it mean headship, for there is no head of the 
church, whether we mean the local group, or use 
the word loosely to mean organized Christianity, 
save the Lord Jesus Christ whom God gave “ to 
be head over all things to the church, which is his 
body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all” 
Pepiinie: 62223), 

Leadership is essential to any working body, 
for evident reasons. In the church there are two 
types of work, and therefore we have two kinds 
of leaders, or officers, if we prefer the latter term. 
That is, it is in the nature of the group to require 
two kinds of leadership. 

There is what we may call the spiritual leader- 
ship. That is an inclusive term, and it means 
those who lead in the development of character 
and the conduct of work by preaching, teaching, 
directing work, shepherding the people. 

We call them by several names, mostly pastor, 
though the terms “elder”? and “bishop” refer 
to the same office, each one emphasizing a special 
phase of the service rendered. The term “ pastor ” 


[47] 


You and Your Church 





means a “ shepherd,’ and the pastor does what 
the Eastern shepherd did for his flock, he feeds 
them, as Jesus said to Peter three times, “‘ Feed 
my sheep,” “ Feed my lambs.” He also weighs 
their duties and aids them, as the old elders of 
the Jews did, the word elder meaning the “ aged,” 
just as did the Latin word “senator.” He 
“‘ oversees’ as director of work. We sum it all 
up in the term pastor or minister. The latter 
means servant, and that fully describes his work. 

The other office is that of deacon. This word 
also means servant, and the office was instituted 
to serve the people on the more material side. It 
has followed the people in their needs and aids 
the pastor in still more intimate ways. 

The two are the permanent New Testament 
offices. Paul gives instructions to the young min- 
ister Timothy (1 Tim. 3: 1-15) about the of- 
ficers of the church, calling them bishops and 
deacons. He addresses his letter to the Philip- 
pians “to all the saints,” and adds “with the 
bishops and deacons.’’ Peter writes about the 
same office and calls it that of elder (1 Peter 
5 : 1-4), and says, “ The elders who are among 
you I exhort, who am also an elder,’ which 
means the same office as bishop, and he tells the 
elders what to do, how to act the pastor—* feed 
the flock,’ adding, “ When the great Shepherd 
shall appear, ye shall receive a crown of glory.” 
We never take the time to use all these three 
words, but we convey them all in the word pastor 
or minister. 


[ 48 | 


An Organism 





These two officers are required in the very 
nature of the organization, and each one is called 
into action as need requires. 

There are other leaders required for specific 
work, like teachers and trustees, visitors, helpers 
with the poor, directors of education and mis- 
sions and music. They are needed in the com- 
plex life into which we are growing, but those 
named above are the two structural offices of the 
church, given by the Master for its efficiency 
and success, and are therefore permanent. 

(3) There are three requirements of all the of- 
ficers and leaders of the church: 

First of all, they must be chosen for the work. 
They are to be servants, and they must be 
chosen, not by themselves, but by the members 
of the church; not by some other church, nor by 
some group of officials over the church, for there 
is no group higher in authority than the local 
church itself, but by the local church which they 
are to serve. In that choice you have a voice and 
a vote, and it counts one just as any other vote 
counts one, even though others may be older in 
years and experience and wisdom and personal 
influence. That right may never be taken away 
from you by any one or any group. It is yours 
as long as you are in the church. When they 
needed “the seven” in the church at Jerusalem, 
Peter did not say, “Tl look out some suitable 
men for the place,’ but he said to the church, 
“Look ye out from among you seven men,” and 
all had a voice in it. 


[ 49 | 


You and Your Church 


Secondly, they must have actual or potential fit- 
ness for the position to which they are appointed. 
The office is not hereditary, nor is the fitness 
hereditary or official, but personal. Natural gifts 
and training, spiritual graces and experience 
give their varying fitness. There must also be 
fitness that grows with experience in the work. 
When any one shows that he is not fitted, or 
declines in the fitness that he showed at the be- 
ginning, he should be retired from the office in 
a Christlike way. You are under obligation to 
participate in all of this. 

Thirdly, all must have the spirit of service. 
That’s what the words “ minister’ and “ deacon ”’ 
mean. ‘The Master said he came not to be min- 
istered unto, but to minister and to give his life | 
a ransom for all, and he asks, “‘ Is the servant 
above his Lord?” Peter warned those who are 
in positions of leadership not to “lord it over 
God’s heritage,” but to “ feed the flock of God... 
willingly, .. of a ready mind ” (1 Peter 5: 2, 3). 


3. Therefore Your Duties in the Case 


(1) Be asound member of the body of Christ, 
not a diseased member, like a sore foot that can- 
not walk on errands, or a palsied hand that can- 
not lift, or a stiff shoulder that cannot get under 
burdens, or a blind eye that cannot see the tasks 
that are near you, or a bad heart that gives out 
under the strain of work, or a deaf ear that can- 
not hear the calls for help. Be a good, sound 
member. 


[50 ] 


An Organism 


(2) Never fail to exercise your right or face 
your obligation to have a part in the selection of 
those who are to lead. You must always be able 
to say heartily, ““ my pastor ’ and “ my deacons.”’ 
If you do not, you become atrophied; you will 
excuse yourself from obvious duties; you will be- 
come a disturber; you will make yourself in a 
degree an outsider. 

(3) Support them so that they can succeed. 
They cannot succeed unless you do support them. 
Help them by following them in the work in 
which you and the others ask them to lead. Re- 
member that it was you who conferred the power 
on them. When you think they are failing, re- 
member they may be failing simply for the lack 
of the support you might give them. That may 
save them from humiliating failure and save the 
cause from injury. Honor requires that you 
support them. Self-respect requires it. 

(4) Make yourself so efiicient in any work you 
do in the church that you will be ready for any 
position that is offered you. You prepare for it 
unconsciously by being faithful to every duty as- 
signed to you and by trying to understand the 
duties of the positions held by others. Be pre- 
pared to answer God’s call to the ministry or to 
other work that needs you. 


[51] 


IV; 
ACCUMULATED TREASURES 


Of course you didn’t find everything perfect in 
the church, but you found treasures that had been 
accumulating for centuries. 


1. Treasures of Truth 


The big ideas of life were there. They had 
been gathered from the Scriptures, from the 
teachings of the great students and preachers and 
from Christian people of all kinds. They had 
been reduced to practice, and that has clarified 
them, defined them, and made them human. 
They were not shut up in the church or in the 
Bible, for all truths are for all people, but they 
had been massed and humanized among the peo- 
ple of God. 

There is truth about God, as disclosed by Jesus 
and by the writers of the Bible and tested in life 
by God’s people. This was ready for distribution 
in the church—the truth as to God’s majesty and 
mercy, his greatness and his grace. There is 
truth about the origin of man, his sins, his strug- 
gles, his perfections in Christ, the sacredness of 
life, its possibilities. Truth also about home and 
human relationships, God’s ownership of us, and 


[ 52 ] 


Accumulated Treasures 


our stewardship over our possessions, our respon- 
sibility for the care of mankind. All the big ideas 
of life were in that group which you entered, 
and they were worked out in practice, refined by 
use, illuminated in character. 


2. Treasures of Ideals 


That means the attitude people take toward the 
truths they hold or are taught as they use their 
imaginations about life and mankind and God 
_ and Jesus. They dream dreams and see visions. 
They create an atmosphere. You come to see 
what they see, but in your own way. You 
breathe in the atmosphere. You found ideals of 
that sort, held by imperfect people who were 
often unchristlike, but there is purity in them, 
and your own vision is clarified. 


3. Treasures of Habit 


There are habits of worship, and you fell into | 
them, modifying them by your own experience; 
habits of Bible study which have helped you to 
work out your own method of using the great 
book; habits of giving, for you found the people 
using their money for the glory of God and under 
his guidance, thereby indicating both where and 
how you might meet your Lord’s wishes for you; 
habits of interpreting God’s movements and en- 
terprises in the world that throw light on your 
own life and make for you one of the most in- 
teresting exercises of mind and heart; habits of 
work. 


[53 ] 


You and Your Church 





4. Treasures of Character 


The best people in the world, taking them all 
together, are in the church. Their characters are 
your joy. They show the direction which your 
own development will take, show your possi- 
bilities, lure you on in realizing them. All possi- 
ble virtues are there, some in full bloom, some in 
the budding stage, others only a prophecy. The 
characters of the church people became your pos- 
session. They enrich you. 

All these treasures have been gathering for 
centuries for you. You had nothing to do with 
producing them. ‘Thousands of people have been 
bringing them there for you. Remember the 
lines of Sam Walter Foss: 


This rose I cut with careless shears, 
And wear and cast away, 

The cosmos wrought a million years 
To make it mine a day. 

This lily by the pasture bars, 

Beneath the walnut tree, 

Long ere the fire-mists formed in stars 
Was on its way to me. 


Only they are yours for all time. God had been 
directing all those thousands of people in their 
preparations for you. I ought to say millions in- 
stead of thousands. You have suddenly come 
into the possession of the most precious estate 
any one ever did inherit this side of the glory 
land. Iam not saying the people are perfect or 


[ 54] 


Accumulated Treasures 


that the treasures are unmingled with impurities. 
But they were made ready for you; there they 
~ are, and they are yours. 


5. Treasures of Work 


Work has been accumulating for them and for 
you. Here are some duties: 

(1) Appreciate those treasures and their pro- 
ducers. Realize your indebtedness to those who 
came before you into the church, those of the 
distant as well as the nearer past. 

(2) Appropriate them. ‘That’s what they are 
for. It would be a sin not to do so. Yet those 
treasures are to be used not in the spirit of a 
slave or of a dolt but with discretion. 

(3) Be a producer of virtue and of all the 
spiritual values you have found in the church. 
Otherwise you are only a consumer, not a produc- 
ing member of the church—an unnatural person. 

(4) Transmit them to the next to come in and 
see that others fall heir to them as you have done. 
Otherwise there is a break in the chain of pro- 
duction, and you go down in history as a para- 
site, inheriting and not bequeathing, receiving 
and not bestowing, consuming and not producing. 


[55 ] 


V 
THE BAPTIST DISTINCTIVE 


Is there a Baptist Distinctive, one definite 
thing that makes one a Baptist—without which 
one is not a Baptist even. though a member of a 
Baptist church—with which one is a Baptist in 
theory even though not a member of a Baptist 
church and a Baptist in practise when trying to 
live up to it? 

There is such a Distinctive. 

What is it? 


1. What It Is Not 


One person, knowing that we practise immer- 
sion and neither sprinkling nor pouring, says, 
“Immersion is your distinctive.” My reply is 
that there are other* denominations which prac- 
tise immersion alone, the Greek Church, for in- 
stance, which is the present State Church of 
Greece and was formerly the State Church of 
Russia. Our distinctive is something that lies 
back of immersion and requires it. 

Another, seeing that we never baptize infants, 
says, “ Adult baptism must be your distinctive.” 
That is a double mistake. We never use the term 
“adult baptism,” for an adult is a grown person, 
and a child reaches the age when he may intel- 
ligently accept Christ and obey him in his ordi- 


[ 56 ] 


The Baptist Distinctive 





nance of baptism long before he is grown. No 
child ought to postpone the acceptance of Christ 
as his Saviour and obedience to him in baptism 
until he is an adult. I have baptized many boys 
and girls of twelve, many also of ten, some of 
nine, a few of eight, and once I baptized a little 
girl of seven, who was just as competent to ac- 
cept Jesus and be baptized as if she were seventy. 
No, we do not say “ adult,” but “ believer’s bap- 
tism.” Even that is not our distinctive, but the 
distinctive lies back of believer's baptism and re- 
quires it. 

Still others, without much thought, may sup- 
pose it is our independent, congregational form 
of church government. No, some other denom- 
inations have that form of government who are 
not Baptists. Our distinctive lies back of that 
and requires it. 


2. What It Is 


When we find it, it must not be out of harmony 
with the human distinctive, for that would bring 
perpetual conflict. And what is the human dis- 
tinctive? It is personality, and the distinctive of 
personality is consciousness, with power of choice 
and self-direction. 

Nor may our distinctive be out of harmony 
with the divine distinctive. What is that? Ex- 
actly the same as the human: personality with 
consciousness, choice, self-direction. In Him it is 
perfect; in us imperfect. When God made man 
in his own image, that image was personality 


[57] 


You and Your Church 





which shows itself in consciousness, choice, self- 
direction. Our distinctive must not antagonize 
the distinctive of God or of man. 

This is what it is: dny person who ever lived 
or ever could live, has as much inherent right to 
deal personally with God as any other person who 
ever did or ever could live. That is to say, there 
is something in the human soul, something in 
God, something in our relations to each other and 
to God, which makes it just as right for one per- 
son to have dealings with God as for any other 
person. 

That distinctive has a fourfold support: 

(1) Inthe fact that all men were made in the 
one image, not part of the human family in that 
image and part in another, but all in that image - 
and therefore all with equal rights. 

(2) In the universal human instinct of free- 
dom. There never was a person born into the 
world who did not feel that he had as much right 
to be free as any one else, though we may find 
some in whom that instinct has been assassinated 
or asphyxiated, and who are perverted types of 
human beings. 

(3) In the Christian instinct of fraternity 
which is found in all real Christians. In being 
born again we get a new type of love, as Paul 
says, “ Ye yourselves are taught of God to love 
one another.’’ There is a love growing out of 
every relationship ; and toward all other followers 
of Christ every real Christian has the feeling of a 
brother and an equal before God. 


[ 58 ] 


The Baptist Distinctive 


(4) In the definite word of Jesus when he 
said, “ Call no man master on earth, for one is 
your master, even Christ,’ and again he says, 
“All ye are brethren.” 

The correlative of that distinctive is the obliga- 
tion of all to have personal dealings with God, 
an obligation, however, which no other human be- 
ing, but only God, can enforce. And he has made 
perfect arrangements to do so through Jesus 
Christ, in whom he has stored all authority; and 
he has made it all known in the story of Christ 
which we call the Bible, so that we can say with 
our Baptist fathers, ‘“‘ The Bible is our sole rule 
of faith and practise.” 

Such is our distinctive. No man nor group of 
men can stand between any soul and God and say 
to that soul: “‘ Unless you pass through my hands 
you cannot have any dealings with God, cannot 
be saved; unless you accept my instructions and 
submit to my demands, God will not have any- 
thing to do with you.” We say that only God 
can rule the soul, that he does so in Christ, and 
that he gives us adequate instructions about him 
and about all our duties in the Bible. 


3. Interferences With Its Working 


Grounded in the nature of man and the nature 
of God, with support in the human instinct of 
freedom and in the Christian instinct of frater- 
nity, and recognized and commanded directly by 
Jesus our Master, how could it ever be over- 
thrown or even overlooked ? 


[59 ] 


You and Your Church 


It must be remembered that there are other ele- 
ments in human nature. On the one hand, there 
are weaknesses of many kinds, such as fear, 
ignorance, superstition, and what the psycholo- 
gists call the “inferiority complex.’ On the 
other hand we find vanity, pride of possession, 
passion for power and rulership, and the supe- 
riority complex. As a result the strong have 
domineered over the weak and made use of them; 
habits have been formed, traditions set in action, 
and institutions developed which have made it 
the interest of the strong to interfere with the 
working of that distinctive and impossible for the 
weak to maintain and assert their faith in their 
inherent rights. 

The way it all came about opens one of the 
most tragical chapters in human history. 

The first converts to the Christian faith were 
Jews, but soon Gentile converts began to come 
in. They came out of religions that were full of 
superstition. Two of those superstitions were 
that of the magical power of ceremonies and that 
of the magical power of a sacred order, a priest- 
hood. 

It was hard to throw off those superstitions. 
They clung to some of the converts who, when 
they saw the ceremony called baptism and the 
one called the Holy Supper, thought there must 
be magic in them. They talked about it; the 
idea spread. Soon they connected salvation with 
the ordinance of baptism; at length they said it 
was not only essential to salvation but was ac- 


[ 60 | 


The Baptist Distinctive 





tually salvation itself, a “ regenerating bath.” In 
other words, a man stood between his fellow men 
and God and told them they could not reach God 
except through him; they must pass through his 
hands and be manipulated by him with the ordi- 
nance of baptism, else God would not save them, 
but would send them to hell. 

That is the first interference with our distinc- 
tive which history reveals. By the end of the 
first century that idea was at work and at the 
time of Tertullian, who was active from about 
A. D. 190 to 220, it was generally held. He 
wrote, “ Is it not wonderful that death should be 
washed away by bathing?” and again, ‘“ Water 
alone—always a perfect, gladsome, simple, mate- 
rial substance, pure in itseli—supplied a worthy 
vehicle for God”; and, “ Water was the first to 
produce that which had life, that it might be no 
wonder if in baptism water knew how to give 
life’; also, “‘ The nature of the water, sanctified 
by the Holy One, itself conceived withal the power 
of sanctifying,’ and “ All waters, therefore, in 
virtue of the pristine privilege of their origin, do, 
after invocation of God, attain the sacramental 
power of sanctification; for the Spirit imme- 
diately supervenes from the heavens and rests 
over the waters, sanctifying them from himself; 
and, being thus sanctified, they imbibe at the same 
time the power of sanctifying.” In other words, 
a man got in between the soul and God and told 
him that, even though he had repented, he 
could not be saved unless he, the minister or 


[ 61 | 


You and Your Church 


priest, brought about his salvation with the cere- 
mony of baptism. 

That defeated the very purpose of Jesus in giv- 
ing baptism. He gave it as a symbol of death 
and resurrection, as Paul tells us in Romans 6 : 
3-6: “ We are buried with him by baptism into 
death, that, like as Christ was raised up from the 
dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also 
should walk in newness of life: for, if we have 
been in the likeness of his death, we shall also be 
in the likeness of his resurrection.” 

In being baptized one is preaching the gospel in 
a living tableau, saying, “ This is a picture of 
what saves me, namely, the death of Christ for 
my sins and his resurrection for my justification.” 
One is also telling one’s Christian experience, say- 
ing, “ This is a picture of the way it saved me, 
by my dying to sin and rising to a new life.” One 
is also proclaiming one’s hope of resurrection, 
saying in symbol, “ This is a picture of what my 
body shall experience when it is raised from the 
grave.” 

But Christ’s purpose was defeated when they 
made baptism a saving rather than a symbolical 
ordinance. Baptism is gone, even though the 
form might remain. 

Evil results followed from which the Christian 
world is suffering even today. An almost in- 
evitable change in the ordinance of baptism took 
place. A man was dying. He had repented of 
his sins and was trusting in Christ for salvation, 
but he could not be baptized. They were in a 


[ 62 ] 


The Baptist Distinctive 





dilemma. If he died without baptism, he would 
go to hell; if they attempted to baptize him, it 
would kill him and send him to hell so much 
quicker. Instead of telling the poor fellow that 
baptism had nothing on earth to do with his sal- 
vation and that faith in a living and loving and 
mighty Saviour was the only requirement, they 
told him there was no hope for him at all. And 
they were actually honest about it. How they 
could think God was such a being is beyond me. 
A God who would not listen to the cry of such a 
penitent and would send him to hell for want 
of manipulation by some one with a material cere- 
mony, even so sacred and beautiful a ceremony 
as baptism, isa God whom every free and rational 
soul would have to despise. 

But there is usually a way out of every dif- 
ficulty, whether a right or a wrong way, and it is 
not surprising that finally one man tapped his 
dome of thought and said, with unspeakable re- 
lief: “I have it. Let’s pour water all over him 
and make it look as much like baptism as pos- 
sible, and perhaps the church will accept it, not 
as the real thing, but as a substitute allowable 
in the circumstances.”’ 

It was accepted reluctantly and under protest. 
But the next time it was easier, and from pour- 
ing water all over a person to pouring it on his 
forehead, and finally sprinkling it on him was a 
perfectly easy and natural transition. The 
sprinkling and pouring were not regarded as bap- 
tism but as permissible substitutes, and thus we 


[ 63 ] 


You and Your Church 


have the two substitutes based on the supersti- 
tion that baptism is a saving rather than a sym- 
bolical ordinance. 

No one claimed that they were the real baptism. 
They knew the meaning of the three Greek words 
—baptizo, to immerse, rhantizo, to sprinkle, and 
echeo, to pour. We transfer the word baptizo 
into our language, and call it “ baptize,’ and the 
noun baptisma we call baptism. If we had trans- 
lated it we should have said ‘‘immerse” and 
“immersion.” They never thought of translat- 
ing the word by “sprinkling” or “ pouring” 
any more than the word rhantizo by the word 
“immerse” or “pour,” or the word echeo by 
“sprinkle”? or “immerse.” It was generations . 
after that, when the two substitutes gained a 
vogue of their own, that those who practised 
them sought to find support for them in the Bible, 
and even today some are trying to do so. No 
scholar now claims that the word transferred into 
our language and called “ baptize”’ means any- 
thing more than “‘ immerse,” nor does any histo- 
rian claim that sprinkling and pouring are 
anything but man-made substitutes based on the 
idea of baptismal salvation. Every time one of 
the substitutes is used it is a proclamation of the 
superstition out of which it arose. 

All the scholars affirm that Jesus and his dis- 
ciples used the word which means immerse and 
never used the well-known words which mean 
sprinkle and pour. (See especially Liddell and 
Scott’s and Thayer’s New Testament lexicons. ) 


[ 64 | 


The Baptist Distinctive 


The great classical writers, both Greek and Latin, 
agree with them. The Greek Fathers, from Bar- 
nabas, A. D. 117, to Basil, A. D. 330, know only 
immersion. The Latin Fathers from Tertullian, 
A. D. 150, to Alcuin, A. D. 735, agree with them. 
All the councils of the Roman church, from the 
Council of Nice, A. D. 325, to the Council of 
Nismes, A. D. 1284, decreed immersion and only 
allowed sprinkling and pouring when immersion 
was not possible. The church liturgies and 
rituals, Gothic, Syrian, Italian, French, English, 
prescribe immersion, in accordance with which, 
as Dean Stanley asserts, “ Edward VI and Eliza- 
beth were both immersed.”’ The Greek church, in 
Greece and Russia, which ought to know the 
meaning of Greek words, practises only immer- 
sion. Catholic writers like Cardinal Gibbons, and 
Episcopal writers like Wall, Dean Stanley, Elli- 
cott, Geike, Canon Liddon, Dean Alford, Eder- 
sheim, Bishop Cleveland Cox, Canon Farrar; and 
Presbyterian writers like Calvin, Beza, Zwingle, 
Turretin, Baxter, George Campbell, Philip Schaff, 
Trumbull; and Methodists like Wesley, Adam 
Wlatkern Gove beret, J. E. Hunt;’ thevereat 
Lutherans, like Martin Luther, Meyer, Harnack, 
and others say immersion is the meaning of the 
word baptism, and was the practise of the early 
centuries. The great commentators, like Meyer, 
Godet, Ellicott, Lightfoot, Olshausen, Plumptree, 
and others, too numerous to name, testify to the 
same thing. So do writers on the life of Christ 
and the life of Paul, like Geike, Stalker, Eder- 


[ 65 ] 


You and Your Church 





sheim, Conybeare and Howson. A few words 
from Dean Stanley, of the Church of England, 
will sum up the testimony of hundreds of Pedo- 
baptist scholars: 


For the first thirteen centuries the almost universal 
practise of baptism was that of which we read in the 
New Testament, and which is the very meaning of the 
word baptize, that those who were baptized were 
plunged, submerged, immersed into the water. 


And again: 


There can be no question that the original form of 
baptism—the very meaning of the word—was complete 
immersion in the deep baptismal waters, and that for the 
first four centuries any other form was either unknown, - 
or regarded, unless in the case of dangerous illness, 
as an exceptional, almost a monstrous case. The change 
from immersion to sprinkling has set aside the larger 
part of the apostolic language regarding baptism, and 
has altered the very meaning of the word. 


The two substitutes were bitterly opposed ex- 
cept in cases of critical sickness, but by the time 
of the Catholic Council of Ravenna, 1311, they 
had won their way and were officially pronounced 
real baptism by the church on the ground that 
the church had the right to change the form of 
baptism. But every time one of the substitutes 
is used it is a proclamation of the superstition out 
of which it arose. 

A second interference with our distinctive came 
as a matter of course. If no one can be saved 
without baptism, then infants dying unbaptized 


[ 66 ] 


The Baptist Distinctive 





will go to hell. It will not do to let God send 
the innocent things to hell, so they administered 
baptism to them—something done to the child 
without his knowledge or consent rather than 
something done by the child out of loving loyalty 
to Christ when he can accept him as Saviour and 
Master and obey him from choice. 

At first, they baptized only children who were 
in immediate danger of death. Later they con- 
cluded that baptism was necessary in order to 
cleanse out hereditary sin. Still later, they came 
to believe that mortal sins committed after bap- 
tism could never be forgiven, so they waited until 
they thought the child was strong enough to 
guard himself against mortal sins before they bap- 
tized him. But by the middle of the third cen- 
tury they had developed their theology so as to 
admit that those who had lapsed into mortal sin 
after baptism might be restored and, from that 
time, the practise of infant baptism has been very 
prevalent. It was all done to save the child from 
hell in case he died in infancy. What a strange 
and repulsive God they made of our loving heav- 
enly Father. Infant baptism constituted the sec- 
ond interference with the working of our distinc- 
tive. 

A third interference was developing. One of 
the superstitions which some of the converts from 
the Gentile religions brought with them was that 
of the magical power of a priesthood. Power 
began to become localized in the officers of the 
church and those officers became graded. If one 


[ 67 | 


You and Your Church 





person has as much inherent right as another 
to deal personally with God, then one group has 
as much right as another group, without over- 
head control from any man or set of men; but 
that was changed and a hierarchy grew up with 
power centered in bishops and archbishops, and, 
the perversion became complete, it all headed up 
uw the pope of Rome. 1 cannot do better than 
quote from Dr. A. H. Newman in his “ History 
of Anti-Pedobaptism: 


Other perversions of Christianity during the early 
centuries are so universally recognized by historians 
and so familiar to all readers of church history, that 
they need only be barely mentioned here. Sacerdotal- 
ism, a constant factor in pagan religious systems, soon. 
intruded itself into the Christian church. The ordi- 
nances, having become mysteries, must be administered 
by a ceremonially qualified priesthood; and, as the ser- 
vices became elaborate and each function must be per- 
formed by a properly qualified functionary, clerical 
gradations came to be multiplied and accurately differ- 
entiated. Out of the simple polity of the apostolic time, 
in accordance with which each congregation chose its 
own bishops or presbyters and deacons for the direction 
of the spiritual work of the body, the administration of 
discipline and the collection and distribution of char- 
ities, there was developed, under the influences of the 
time, a system of presidential administration in which 
the chief elder (or bishop) directed the affairs of the 
local church with the assistance and advice of a board 
of presbyters. As the responsible head of the church 
he soon came to have chief control of the finances, and 
such control tended to increase his relative importance. 
As Christian work spread from older centers the newly 
established congregations were kept in relations of de- 
pendence on the mother church, or, rather, as integral 


[ 68 ] 


The Baptist Distinctive 





parts thereof. Thus the pastor of the central church 
would have the supervision of a greater or smaller num- 
ber of outside congregations, over each of which a pres- 
byter of the central church came to preside. Thus arose 
diocesan episcopacy. At first this arrangement was 
adopted without any ambitious intentions on the part 
of the pastors as seemingly the most effective way of 
conducting Christian work. But, as the dependent con- 
gregations became conscious of strength and their pres- 
byter-pastors became restless under episcopal control, 
' which in some cases was no doubt arbitrarily exercised, 
friction arose between bishops and presbyters. By that 
time (about the middle of the third century—the case 
of Cyprian and the Carthaginian presbyters is in point) 
the sacerdotal idea was pretty fully developed. Cyprian 
and those who were like-minded believed that eccle- 
siastical unity was absolutely essential and that schism 
was one of the greatest of evils. They went so far as to 
maintain that outside of the one ecclesiastical organ- 
ization, whose center of unity was found in the epis- 
copate, there is no salvation. By the strong opposition 
that the presbyters made to the assumption of authority 
on the part of the bishops the latter were led to assert 
the divine right and the irresponsibility of bishops. 
The same sense of the necessity of organic union and 
unity of administration afterward led to the centraliza- 
tion of authority in metropolitans and finally in the 


papacy. 
To quote further from Doctor Newman: 


No less destructive of the spirit of primitive Chris- 
tianity was the early intrusion of the doctrine of the 
meritoriousness of external works. Jews and pagans 
alike attached great merit to almsgiving, fasting, and 
the frequent utterance of fixed forms of prayer. By 
the middle of the third century leading churchmen like 
Cyprian did not hesitate to teach that almsgiving is a 
means of securing the remission of sins and of pur- 
chasing an eternal inheritance. 


[ 69 ] 


You and Your Church 





Asceticism also was imported into early Christianity 
from paganism. ‘This disposition to regard the body 
as intrinsically evil and all natural impulses as worthy 
only of being trampled upon is a common feature of 
pagan religions. Fanatical seeking for martyrdom, ex- 
cessive fasting, and the exaltation of virginity were the 
earliest forms of Christian asceticism. It culminated 
in the brutalities of hermit life. 

Superstition and idolatry were universally prevalent 
in ancient paganism as they are in modern. They per- 
vaded and corrupted every department of life and oc- 
cupied a most prominent place in the popular conscious- 
ness. In proportion as Christianity increased in popular 
influence and enjoyed immunity from persecution was 
the accession to the church of unchristianized or im- 
perfectly Christianized life.. Not only did the ordinances 
assume a pagan hue and sacerdotal and ascetic ideas 
become prevalent, but idolatrous practises corresponding 
in almost every detail with those of the surrounding 
heathenism came to be openly indulged in and re- 
garded as Christian. The exaltation of saints and 
martyrs, the worship of images of Christ and the saints, 
the veneration of bones and other relics of the worthies 
of the past, pilgrimages to shrines and other holy places, 
vigils at the tombs of saints, the invocation of Mary the 
mother of Jesus as “the mother of God,” the invocation 
of saints, belief in the efficacy of relics and shrines to 
cure diseases—these and many like superstitious prac- 
tises were countenanced by some of the ablest and 
holiest of the Christian leaders of the fourth and fol- 
lowing centuries and, by the fifth century, had become 
well-nigh universal. 


Thus we see that two forces were at work 
changing the church, one from the inside, another 
from without. People came into the church to be 
saved, not because they were saved. They re- 
versed the essential order by trying to get to 


[ 70 ] 


The Baptist Distinctive 





Christ through the church instead of getting into 
the church through Christ. The church filled up 
with people who were not Christians at all and 
they brought their paganism with them. The 
church of the apostles was gone and a semi- 
heathen organization had now been developed in 
its place. 

A fourth interference came along with the de- 
velopment of the power of this tremendous organ- 
ization, and that was the union of Church and 
State. The Roman Emperors were shrewd rulers 
and showed a masterful skill in controlling the 
nations which they conquered. Their method was 
to Romanize them as thoroughly as _ possible. 
They knew the value of religion and its sanc- 
tions in controlling their subjects. Constantine 
was converted before his death, and his successor, 
Theodosius, who felt the need of this rising re- 
ligion in his business of ruling, adopted it, uniting 
Church and State in one of the most unholy 
unions that ever disgraced humanity. Fora State 
Church is a twofold monstrosity—a perversion 
of the function of government and an assault on 
the most distinctive thing in human nature, 
namely, the power of choice. Through the cen- 
turies many thousands were made martyrs 
through the operation of that inhuman infamy 
which for so long occupied the seat of power, 
successfully maintaining itself against protest 
and challenge and denunciation. 

From that day till the year 1638 there was not 
a country on the face of the earth where the 


[71] 


You and Your Church - 


Christian religion prevailed but Church and State 
were united in compelling the people to support 
the Church and in suppressing any éffort of any- 
body to exercise his God-given right of dealing 
with God personally as he and the Spirit of God 
might order. 

A fifth interference was in taking the Bible 
away from the people as a dangerous book and 
making the church superior to it. The officials 
knew that if the people read the Bible they would 
revolt against their unbiblical, unchristian, and 
inhuman assumption of the authority that belongs 
to God alone, so they said to the people, “ You 
cannot understand it, besides you have not time 
to read it; we will read it and tell you all you 
need to know.”’ 

So here are the five interferences with the 
working of our distinctive in their historical 
sequence: Putting one man between other men 
and God and requiring them to pass through his 
hands and be manipulated with the beautiful ordi- 
nance of baptism; secondly, administering bap- 
tism to infants instead of allowing them to obey 
Christ for themselves when they are old enough 
to accept him; thirdly, by destroying the indepen- 
dence of groups of individuals called churches 
and developing a graded official life in which was 
centered all authority over the local churches; 
fourthly, the unholy union of Church and State; 
fifthly, denying the Bible to the laity and making 
it second in authority to the officials who consti- 
tuted the Church. 


[72] 


The Baptist Distinctive 


4. The Age-long Effort for the Recovery of the 
Distinctive 


Three things are necessary for its recovery. 

(1) Lhe Idea liself. That cannot be perma- 
nently lost as long as there are human beings with 
the instinct of freedom to assert itself sooner or 
later, with the Christian instinct of fraternity to 
demand for others what it claims for itself, with 
the great fact of the one single image of God 
which is in any one person as truly as in any 
other, and with the words of Jesus forever ring- 
ing in the ears of Christian people, “ Call no man 
master on earth, for one is your Master, even 
Christ.” The idea persists. 

(2) But there must be advocates of that idea. 
When people joined the church in order to be- 
come Christians it is fair to say they did not be- 
come Christians, except in limited numbers, for 
that is not the way to become Christians, and 
those actually did become so in spite of the wrong 
way. Among those who were actual Christians 
and not simply church-members, most of them 
would get hold of the idea and some of them 
would have the courage to speak out. Of course 
they suffered more than ostracism. It meant 
persecution and often death. 

They propagated the idea in two ways. One 
way was by agitation. They did it not for them- 
selves alone, but for those who would deny them 
their rights. Some of them were radical and 
“one-ideaed,” as we sometimes say. Of course 


[ 73 | 


You and Your Church 


they were. Some did not have the idea whole, 
but they had hold of it. They were wise enough 
not to agitate for civil liberty, but only for their 
religious rights. Some were far-sighted enough 
to know that civil liberty would finally come as a 
result, as a sort of by-product, we might say. 
They knew that, if they once got the rulers to 
recognize the rights of conscience, civil liberty 
would become a fact, whatever the outward form 
of government. They knew that if they advo- 
cated a form of government corresponding to 
the form of church polity which they held, they 
would lose both battles, so they kept to the main 
issue, knowing that, when hearts were changed. 
and charged with fraternal love, right personal 
and political relations would come mainly by vital 
processes. ‘They were right. 

The other way was by illuminating with their 
personal lives as free men in Christ Jesus and 
with their group life. 

(3) A place where that idea would be allowed 
to grow and work itself out was essential. We 
have to remember that, wherever Christianity pre- 
vailed in the whole world, it was a state religion 
and used the arm of the law to prevent freedom 
of worship, taxing all for the support of itself, 
fining and imprisoning and torturing and mur- 
dering those who dared to try to worship God as 
their own consciences and the Bible directed. 
That was the case almost everywhere, and those 
agitators were driven on from place to piace and 
from country to country. 


[ 74] 


The Baptist Distinctive 





They lived in Italy, Switzerland (called Hel- 
vetia), France, Germany, Spain, the British Isles, 
Bohemia, Holland. That is, they tried to live in 
those places. Whether it meant death or not, 
they advocated that undying truth and suffered. 
‘During the fourth and fifth centuries,” to quote 
again from Doctor Newman, 


British Christians seem to have held aloof in a 
measure from the paganizing influences in which the 
continental church became involved. Diocesan Epis- 
copacy seems not to have existed. The study of the 
Scriptures was pursued with zeal in the numerous semi- 
monastic colleges for the training of pastors and mis- 
sionaries. An extensive and successful missionary work 
was carried on in Ireland, Scotland, France, and Ger- 
many. Human authority in matters of religion was 
indignantly repudiated. Humility and simplicity in 
Christian life were insisted upon, and the pomp and 
worldliness of the Roman missionaries, who sought to 
convert them, proved highly offensive. An example of 
their missionary activity is the work of Patrick (A. D. 
432 onward) who evangelized more or less thoroughly 
the whole of Ireland and left a reputation for sanctity 
of life and spiritual power that entitles him to be con- 
sidered one of the greatest of missionaries. 


Another Irish Christian was Columba, who, in 
the sixth century, planted evangelical churches 
throughout Scotland. Still another Irishman was 
Columbanus, who, with thirteen companions, es- 
tablished missions in Burgundy, Switzerland, and 
Northern Italy. The work inaugurated by him 
was carried into the Rhine Valley, Thuringia, 
Bavaria, and Southeastern Germany. Ebrard 
writes that there existed ‘a flourishing, well-or- 


[75] 


You and Your Church 





ganized, Rome-free church whose only supreme 
authority was the holy Scriptures, whose preach- 
ing was the word of the free, redeeming grace of 
God.” 

The same writer goes on: 


A simple, but well-organized church existed from the 
Pyrenees to the Scheldt, from Chur to Utrecht, whose 
only crime was that it did not recognize the Roman 
Church as its supreme head; hence also knew no new 
invocation of saints, no mass, no auricular confession 
and the like and did not do homage to gross Pelagian- 
ism but preached justification through faith. 


Forster describes that church as “ recognizing 
the Scriptures as its completely sufficient norm.” 
Doctor Newman further says: 


Notwithstanding the terrible persecutions to which 
they were subjected during the seventh and following 
centuries by the Saxon kings at the instigation of the 
Roman Church, Christians of the ancient British type 
are known to have maintained their existence in con- 
siderable numbers, especially in Wales and Scotland, 
until the eleventh century. It is probable that they 
were never completely destroyed and that they reap- 
peared in the Lollards of the fourteenth century. 


These and other bodies of people had hold of 
the distinctive, though not always in its whole- 
ness; they released it and sent it on its way down 
the centuries. 

From the twelfth century on its advocates be- 
came more constant, more coherent. About the 
year 1173 Peter Waldo, a wealthy man of Lyons, 
France, gave up his property and devoted him- 


[ 76 | 


The Baptist Distinctive 





self to preaching the gospel. He and his fol- 
lowers established churches in France, Italy, Bo- 
hemia, Southern Germany, and the southwestern 
provinces of Austria. 

There were sects called Taborites and Bohe- 
mian Brethren and Moravians and Pickards, who 
held the distinctive more or less whole. Peter 
Chelcicky of Bohemia, the spiritual father of the 
Bohemian Brethren, carried the doctrine of per- 
sonal liberty farther than most others had done. 

These bodies of Christians, who opposed the 
union of Church and State on principle and not 
simply in order to gain their own rights, were 
the thinkers who brought on the Reformation of 
the sixteenth century. Usually they were called 
“nicknames ”’ by their enemies, from the names 
of prominent leaders or the locations where they 
carried on, or names indicating some peculiarity. 

Many groups of them came to be called “ Re- 
baptizers.” You readily see why. When a per- 
son was converted through their agency and was 
told of the requirement to follow Jesus in his 
ordinance of baptism, but was informed he had 
been baptized in infancy, his reply was that it 
was something done to him and not by him, and 
he must be baptized for himself. So their ene- 
mies called the group by the Greek word “ Ana- 
baptists,’’ which means “ Rebaptizers.”’ 

These were the agitators who prepared the 
way for Martin Luther, and they won his assent 
to the fact of immersion as baptism and to the 
wrongness of both infant baptism and the union 


[77] 


You and Your Church 


of Church and State. But Luther had come 
straight out of the heart of the Roman Church, 
and his theology had much of Rome in it. Be- 
sides, he was an autocrat by nature and by the 
discipline of a church in which there were but 
two classes, the ruling and the ruled classes, the 
one above him that ruled him and the one below 
whom he and his fellow priests were to rule. 
These Anabaptists were the real thinkers of 
the Reformation. When Luther came from the 
Wartburg to Wittenburg and found that three 
Anabaptists, Nicolas Storch, Max Sttbner, and 
Thomas Munzer, had captured the intellects of 
Cellarius and Carlstadt and even of Melancthon, 
he was filled with rage and drove them off, saying 
to Stibner, “God punish you, Satan.” That 
swing from the clear thinking of the Anabaptists 
to which he had really assented, drove him to ac- 
cept infant baptism as a means of perpetuating 
his church, for he was afraid to trust the gospel 
alone, and it led him to retain connection with 
the state in order that he might not lose the sup- 
port of which he felt such great need. While he 
said again and again that immersion alone was 
baptism, he retained the two substitutes. He re- 
tained the doctrine of Rome as to the Lord’s 
Supper as a sacrament and not a symbol. Had 
he accepted the distinctive whole and lived it there 
would have been no State Church in the part of 
Germany which he influenced and the place in 
which the idea could be domesticated and thence 
transplanted would have been secured therein. 


[ 78 ] 


The Baptist Distinctive 


A new country must be found for it. God had 
that country awaiting the eye and the foot of 
man. He utilized the man best fitted of all the 
men then living to find it and make it known. 
That man knew nothing at all about the distinc- 
tive, nor about the purpose of God in directing 
him to this land. He was like other Catholics, 
and the thought of religious liberty had never 
penetrated his mind. He had reached the con- 
clusion that the earth is round, and he had dreams 
of finding India and China by this route and en- 
joying all the luxuries of the Orient. He had 
the traits for the adventure. When he had dis- 
covered the land and made it known, his provi- 
dential task was done. 

The rulership of the land must not be entrusted 
to those who could not plant that idea here. The 
Latin races, with many admirable characteristics, 
were all Roman Catholic, and they had not the 
least conception of liberty of conscience. Al- 
though the Baptists of England had been per- 
secuted by their own countrymen, they belonged 
to the one race which at that time was most 
capable of being the guardian of the idea, the 
Anglo-Saxon. God was directing. 

There were three types of people who came 
here from England at an early date, besides 
smaller groups from Holland and Sweden and 
France and other lands. 

First were the early settlers of Virginia. They 
were State Church people, members of the Es- 
tablished Church. They were the Cavaliers, 


[ 79 ] 


You and Your Church 





worldly and strangers to the idea of religious 
liberty. They taxed all the people to support their 
church and later, when our Baptist fathers claimed 
the right to worship God as they were taught in 
his Word, they fined them and whipped them, 
and put them in prison. They punished those 
who committed the crime of preaching the gospel 
of Christ. James Madison, who had talked with 
many Baptists of the principle of religious liberty, 
wrote to a friend in ‘Philadelphia, 


that diabolical, hell-conceived principle of persecution 
rages among some, and to their eternal infamy the 
clergy can furnish their quota of imps for such pur- 
poses. There are at the present time, in the adjacent ~ 
county, not less than five or six well-meaning men in 
close jail for proclaiming their religious sentiments, 
which are in the main quite orthodox. 


That was in Virginia. God could not use that 
group to plant the idea here, for they did not 
have it. 

A second group we call the Puritans. They 
settled in Boston and Salem and were called Puri- 
tans because they believed in a purer life than 
prevailed in the Church of England. They did 
not leave their church at first but came here with 
the hope of establishing a purer type of Christian 
life. They had no more idea of religious liberty 
than the people they left behind in England. They 
are the ones who hung witches and Quakers and 
whipped Baptists and felt that in so doing they 
were rendering distinguished and meritorious ser- 
vice to God. Some one said of them that they 


[ 80 | 


The Baptist Distinctive 





came here to worship God according to the dic- 
tates of their own consciences and to make every 
body else do the same. ‘They were just as in- 
tolerant of those who differed from them as were 
their less religious brethren down in Virginia. 
They were not Separatists when they came, 
though many of them did separate from the 
State Church after a while. They did not bring 
the distinctive, did not have it to bring. 
- A third group were the Pilgrim Fathers who 
landed at Plymouth Rock in December, 1620. 
They belonged to the Independents or Congrega- 
tionalists who were known as Separatists in En- 
gland, because they separated from the State 
Church, and also Independents because they be- 
lieved in the independent form of church govern- 
ment. The term Puritan is sometimes applied 
to them in a general way. They demanded abso- 
lute religious liberty for themselves and were the 
best people religiously who had come to this coun- 
try, but did not have that distinctive, for they 
united State and Church in an indissoluble pact, 
taxed people of all faiths to support their church, 
enforced their claims on all regardless of their 
conscientious convictions, and required that a per- 
son be a member of the church before he could 
vote. In Connecticut, as late as 1833, the State 
taxed the people as a whole, regardless of church 
connections, to support the Church, and they did 
the same in Massachusetts as late as 1834. 

I select several instances from Nathaniel Mor- 
ton’s “ Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers,” show- 


[ 81 | 


You and Your Church 





ing the spirit of the colonies both at Salem and 
Plymouth. At Salem two non-conformist min- 
isters, named Skelton and Higginson, came over 
from England and were ordained August 6, 1629. 
Mr. Higginson was instructed to draw up a con- 
fession of faith and a covenant, and from it I 
quote the following with a shudder: 


And because they foresaw that this wilderness might 
be looked upon as a place of liberty and therefore might 
in time be troubled with erroneous spirits, therefore 
they did put in one article into the confession of faith, 
on purpose, about the duty and power of the magistrate 
in matters of religion. 


In other words, they intended to be in a posi- 
tion to use the civil officers in dealing with any 
one who should even express, much less act upon, 
the conviction that America was a land of re- 
ligious liberty. That was in Salem where we 
have learned to expect such things. The same 
year there came two brothers named Brown, one 
a lawyer, the other a merchant, who insisted on 
holding public services and using the Church of 
England services from the Book of Common 
Prayer. But the governor and council passed on 
the matter and “ the governor told them that New 
England was no place for such as they, and there- 
fore he sent them back to England at the return 
of the ship the same year;”’ in other words, sent 
them back in the same ship that brought them. 

Another instance seems laughable today. On 
August 7, 1667, Rev. John Wilson, pastor of the 
church in Boston, was on his death-bed and was 


[ 82 ] 


The Baptist Distinctive 





asked by those who thought his judgment would 
have special value as he saw the world recede 
from him “ what he conceived to be those sins 
amongst us which provoked the displeasure of 
God against the country.” His reply was that 
he had often thought the three sins were Separa- 
tion, Anabaptism, and Korahism. The first he 
did not explain, but probably he meant separa- 
tion from the Church of England. By Anabap- 
tism he said he meant “ for our neglect of bap- 
tizing the children of the church I think God is 
provoked by it.” By Korahism he meant that 
the people would rise up and contradict their min- 
isters and teachers. 

The above three groups utterly failed to bring 
the distinctive. Some one must bring it, if God’s 
purpose was not to be thwarted. There was only 
one group that had it whole and there was not 
one of them among the Cavaliers or the Puritans 
or the Pilgrims. 

But wait. God is at work. It will come in an 
unexpected way. 

A new minister came to Boston. He was of 
Welsh extraction and had been brought up in the 
Established Church, but he had been listening to 
those Anabaptists, by this time called Baptists. 
He had begun to imbibe their great idea, but had 
not yet separated himself from the church of his 
childhood. When he came to Boston the people 
thought they had captured the very best preacher 
anywhere. But he began to release that idea in 
his sermons and then they revised their original 


[ 83 | 


You and Your Church 


valuation of him. He was hardly as good a 
preacher as they at first thought, for he hinted 
that the police court of Boston had no right to 
determine the conduct of church services or the 
sermons of the ministers. That was shocking. 
Presently he went up to Salem, where the big 


idea came out stronger, and that made life still 


more uncomfortable for him. Then he tried 
Plymouth and was rebuked for that sort of 
preaching. He went back to Salem, where he 
became still more pronounced. He found that 
the Puritans of Salem and Boston were just as 


intolerant as was Archbishop Laud of England. 


He saw that the union of Church and State was 
unbiblical and unnatural, a perversion of the func- 
tion of government, and an assault on the most 
distinctive thing in human nature, the power and 
right of choice. At first his revolt against both 
the Puritan and Pilgrim churches was not so 
much against their doctrines as against their prin- 
ciple of a State Church with its essential denial 
of the right of thought and choice and self-direc- 
tion for every man. 

His banishment from Salem was decided upon 
by the court of “‘ prudent magistrates ” in Boston, 
the charge against him being that he taught “ that 
the magistrate ought not to punish the breach of 
the first table otherwise than in such case as did 
disturb the civil peace.” The “ first table ’’ meant 
religious worship. 

The decree of banishment continues, “‘ Where- 
as Mr. Roger Williams, one of the elders of the 


[ 84 ] 


ee 


The Baptist Distinctive 





church of Salem, hath broached and divulged new 
and dangerous opinions against the authority of 
magistrates,’ as Morton says, “a disturber of the 
peace both of the church and commonwealth.” 

So this man was banished because he believed 
and taught that no Church, or Church and State 
combined, had the right to control a person in his 
relations to and his dealings with his God. 

Then that man decided to do a thing that 
proved to be the greatest deed since the days of 
the apostles, the one thing for which the groan- 
ing centuries had been waiting, for which human- 
ity, whether consciously or unconsciously, had 
been longing, toward which God had been work- 
ing for ages. After walking southward through 
the deep snows, accompanied by a little group of 
brave souls who felt the power of that newly dis- 
covered distinctive, he bought a piece of land 
from the Indians near Narragansett Bay, wrote a 
constitution for the government of the people who 
should live there, and put into that constitution a 
clause that had never before in the history of the 
world been written into any constitution for the 
government of any people, and that clause said 
that everybody should have the right under that 
government to worship God according to his own 
judgment, whether he was pagan, or Jew, or 
Christian of any denomination, or member of no 
church. They called that place which he had thus 
preempted in the name of liberty by the gracious 
name of “Providence.” They organized the 
first Baptist church of ‘that city and of the 


[ 85 | 


You and Your Church 





nation. He and the original settlers entered into 
a glorious compact which read thus: 3 


We whose names are hereunder written, being de- 
sirous to inhabit in the town of Providence, do promise 
to submit ourselves in active and passive obedience to 
all such orders or agencies as shall be made for the 
public good of the body in an orderly way by the major 
consent of the present inhabitants, masters of families, 
incorporated into a township, and of such others whom 
they shall admit into the same, only in civil things. 


That was in March, 1638. The substance of 
the contract was reaffirmed in another document 
signed in 1640. The same principles were em- 
bodied in the code of laws adopted by the colony. 
in 1647 and finally incorporated in the Royal 
Charter given by Charles II in 1663: 


Our Royal will and pleasure is that no person within 
the said colony at any time hereafter shall be in any 
way molested, punished, disquieted, or called in ques- 
tion for any differences of opinion in matters of re- 
ligion and do not actually disturb the civil peace of the 
said colony. 


Thus, for the first time in the history of human- 
ity, a state laid its corner-stone in the basic prin- 
ciple of equal liberty for all. There had been at 
times some toleration in European countries for 
people holding different views from those of the 
State Church, but toleration and liberty are two 
distinct and essentially conflicting things. 

When a memorial to Roger Williams was 
placed in the national capitol in 1872, Senator 
Anthony said: 


[ 86 ] 


The Baptist Distinctive 





Roger Williams did not merely lay the foundations 
of religious freedom; he constructed the whole edifice, 
in all its impregnable strength and in all its imperish- 
able beauty. Religious freedom, which now, by gen- 
eral consent, underlies the foundation principles of civil- 
ized government, was, at that time, looked upon as a 
wilder theory than any proposition, moral, political, or 
religious, that has since engaged the serious attention 
of mankind. It was regarded as impracticable, disor- 
ganizing, impious, and if not utterly subversive of social 
order, it was not so, only because its manifest absurdity 
would prevent any serious effort to enforce it. 


There was one early instance of toleration in 
this country that has been sometimes claimed as 
religious liberty, but that is very far from the 
truth. I read in the speech of a prominent man 
who was a candidate for an eminent office that 
the first instance of religious liberty in our coun- 
try was in Maryland and in the Bill of Toleration 
granted by Lord Baltimore, a Catholic, who 
founded that province. 

The claim is correct except in four particulars: 
(1) Asto the time. That Bill of Toleration was 
adopted in 1649 while Roger Williams wrote his 
document in 1638, eleven years earlier. (2) As 
to liberty. Lord Baltimore granted toleration, 
not liberty. He bestowed it, but neither he nor 
any one else could bestow liberty. They could 
recognize it as an inalienable right which no man 
on earth could give. (3) Lord Baltimore did it 
under compulsion, Williams recognized it as 
each man’s right. Lord Baltimore’s people were 
Catholics but lived under a Protestant govern- 


[ 87 ] 


You and Your Church 


ment, and would not have been allowed by that 
government to deny one of its Protestant prov- 
inces their right of worship. With Williams and 
his friends it was a matter of conviction that all 
men had that right, and he acted on the principle 
of eternal right. (4) Lord Baltimore belonged to 
a Church that had never in a single instance recog- 
nized that people had such a thing as the inborn 
right to liberty of worship. That church was the 
State Church in most of the nations of Europe 
till that union was broken in several countries, as 
Germany, England, Sweden, Holland, etc., and 
Catholic countries had never taken advantage of» 
any one of their many opportunities to recognize 
that people could worship God as they thought 
best. The Catholic Church did not even grant 
that toleration in Maryland, but one of its mem- 
bers, under compulsion of England, gave tolera- 
tion instead of liberty. It would have used Lord 
Baltimore to set up a State Church, prisons, 
thumscrews, racks, and all, if it had been allowed, 
while Williams and his friends belonged to a 
church whose very nature compelled it to act as 
he did and whose history had been one prolonged 
effort to procure and secure religious liberty not 
for themselves alone but for all, even for those 
who, if they had had the power, would have | 
denied it to them. 

The Catholics could no more recognize the free- 
dom of the soul than could Baptists deny it. It is 
of the nature and structure of their organization. 
To recognize it would be to destroy the whole 


[ 88 ] 


The Baptist Distinctive 


system. They say that the Church, through its 
officials, can forgive sins, can deny salvation to 
any one, and has the right to rule the souls of all 
men as God’s vice-gerent, vice-ruler. When the 
pope speaks “ex cathedra,’ he cannot make a 
mistake, because the Holy Spirit will not allow it, 
and the faithful must accept what he says as a 
deliverance from God. If they do not, they are 
not the faithful, but reprobates to be punished for 
not surrendering their divinely given right to 
deal personally with their God and Father. 

Take a few quotations from Catholic author- 
ities : 

We do, on the part of Almighty God, Father, Son, 
and Holy Spirit, and also by the authority of the 
Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and by our own, ex- 
communicate and curse all Hussites, Wicliffites, Luther- 
ans, Zwinglians, Calvinists, Huguenots, Anabaptists, 
Trinitarians and Apostates from Christ, and all and 
Sundry other heretics, by whatsoever name they are 
reckoned, and of whatsoever sect they may be, and 
their receivers, aiders, and abettors and in general all 
their defenders whatsoever, and those who without our 
authority and that of the Apostolic See knowingly read 
or retain or print or in any way defend the books con- 
taining their heresy or treating of religion (Extract 
from Bull in Coena Domini, by Pope Paul V). 


The above is published in Rome every year on 
Maundy Thursday. 
The bishop takes this oath: 


To the utmost of my power I will persecute and 
attack heretics, schismatics, and rebels against our lord 
(the Pope), and his aforesaid successors. 


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You and Your Church 





Canons IX and X, Council of Trent, say, 


If any one shall say that sacramental absolution by a 
priest is not a judicial act, but a mere ministry ... even 
though the priest should not absolve seriously but in a 
joke, let him be accursed. 


Extract from creed of Pope Pius IV: 


I likewise admit the Holy Scriptures according to 
that sense which our Holy Mother, the Church, has 
held and does hold, whose province it is to judge of the 
true sense and interpretation of Holy Scripture... 
Whatsoever is condemned by the Church I, in like man- 
ner, condemn, reject and anathematize. 


To the same effect speak Canones et Decrett 
Concilit Tridentini, and the authoritative Cat- 
echism of Council of Trent, ‘ Faith of Our 
Fathers,” by Cardinal Gibbons, and scores of 
others. | 

To the above quotations I add a confirming 
word by the scintillating Papini, an Italian Cath- 
olic layman, who wrote a brilliant and erratic 
“Life of Christ ’’ several years ago. 

Protesting against the work of Protestants 
among the Italians he says: 


Leave us under the tyranny of the Pope; it is a 
tyranny established by Christ, the tyranny of a father, 
and we prefer it infinitely to the tyranny of pastors, of 
quacks, of consistories, and of books. We “savages,” 
we medievalists still hold to the bull Unam Sanctam, 
which says: “ We assert, declare, define, and pronounce 
that for every human creature to be subject to the 
Roman Pontiff is absolutely necessary to salvation.” 
We demand but little, only one thing: that you subscribe 


[ 90 ] 


The Baptist Distinctive 


with us to the documents issued from the Vatican dur- 
ing the past seventy years, from the Syllabus of Pius X 
to the encyclical Ubi arcano Dei of Pius XI inclusive. 


The spread of religious liberty to the other 
States and its final adoption into the Constitution 
of the United States is a story of thrilling hero- 
ism on the part of our Baptist fathers. 

Several instances of the inhumanity with which 
they were treated by State Churches must be 
given in order to set forth the facts of history 
clearly. One is the case of Henry Dunstan, the 
first president of Harvard University. I quote 
from Dr. Henry C. Vedder’s “ A Short History 
of the Baptists,” p. 197: 


For preaching against infant baptism this learned, 
godly, and zealous man was indicted by the Grand Jury, 
condemned to suffer a public admonition, and placed 
under bonds for good behavior, finally being compelled 
to resign the presidency of the college of which he had 
been the greatest benefactor. Shortly afterward he 
was arraigned for refusing to have his child baptized 
but was saved from further persecution by his death. 


Another instance was that of John Clarke, who 
founded the First Baptist Church of Newport, 
and Obadiah Holmes, and I quote again from 
Doctor Vedder: 


While they were spending the Lord’s Day with a 
brother who lived near Lynn it was concluded to have 
religious services in the house. Two constables broke 
in while Mr. Clarke was preaching from Revelation 
3: 10, and the men were haled before the court. For 
this offense they were sentenced to pay, Clarke a fine 


[91 | 


You and Your Church 


of twenty pounds and Holmes one of thirty pounds, in 
default of which they were to be “well whipped.” A 
friend paid Clarke’s fine and he was set at liberty, 
whether he would or not, but Holmes was “ whipped 
unmercifully ’ (the phrase is Bancroft’s) in the streets 
of Boston for the atrocious crime of preaching the 
gospel and of adding thereto the denial of infant bap- 
tism. 

But just before the lash was laid upon Holmes he 
said to the bystanders, “Good people all, I am now 
about to be baptized with the baptism of affliction that 
so I may have fellowship with my Lord.” 


The way the great distinctive spread from | 
Rhode Island into the Constitution of the United 
States and the constitutions of the several States, 
one by one, is a fascinating study. It should be 
noted that the Constitution of the United States, 
as originally adopted, did not forbid the union of 
Church and State, said nothing about it. Our 
Baptist forefathers knew there was danger lurk- 
ing in that silence, but they supported George 
Washington and the other leaders who with very 
great difficulty secured its adoption by the thirteen 
States. But there was one thing in the Constitu- 
tion which gave them hope. That was the method 
which the document provided for its own amend- 
ment. They said to each other, “ We will adopt 
it and then amend it.” So, at once, they won 
the aid of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and 
other men of balanced judgment in getting the 
First Amendment to the national Constitution 
passed. This brief but meaningful safeguard of 
religious liberty reads as follows: 


[92] 


The Baptist Distinctive 





Congress shall make no law regarding the establish- 
ment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. 


The States took it up, one by one later, and 

wrote the equivalent of it into their constitutions, 
Connecticut retaining the old régime of taxing 
all people for the support of the Congregational 
church till 1833, and Massachusetts till 1834. 
At last the distinctive had found a place where 
it could be domesticated and grow, and whence it 
could spread into all the world, as it is doing 
now. ‘Through all the centuries it had been at 
work on the Continent of Europe and in En- 
gland, producing great epochs, making great men 
and women, and bringing on world movements 
whose significance can only now be clearly dis- 
cerned. : 

We are glad that the agency of Baptists, under 
the providence of God, in securing soul liberty 
for mankind is universally and generously recog- 
nized by students of history and of the science of 
government. 

Masson in his life of Milton wrote: 


Not to the Church of England, nor to Scottish Pres- 
byterians, nor to English Puritanism at large, does the 
honor of the first perception of the full principle of 
liberty of conscience and its first assertion in English 
speech belong. That honor has to be assigned, I believe, 
to the Independents generally and the Baptists in par- 
ticular. 


John Locke the philosopher says, “ Baptists 
_ were the first and only promoters of absolute 


[93 ] 


You and Your Church 





liberty—just and true liberty, equal and impar- 
tial a 

Stoughton, in his ecclesiastical history of En- 
gland, says that to the Baptists “belongs the 
honor of presenting in this country the first dis- 
tinct and broad plea for liberty of conscience.” 

George Bancroft, in his “ History of the United 
States,’ writes, “‘ Freedom of conscience, un- 
limited freedom of mind, was, from the first, the 
trophy of the Baptists.” 

In discussing the achievement of bringing about 
the complete separation of Church and State, - 
Leonard Woolsey Bacon, a Congregationalist, 
says: 


So far as this work was a work of intelligent convic- 
tion and religious faith, the chief honor of it must be 
given to the Baptists. Other sects, notably the Presby- 
terians, had been energetic and efficient in demanding 
their own liberties; the Friends and the Baptists agreed 
in demanding liberty of conscience and worship and 
equality before the law for all alike. But the active 
labor in this cause was mainly done by the Baptists. 
It is to their consistency and constancy in the warfare 
against the privileges of the powerful “ Standing 
Order” of New England and of the moribund estab- 
lishment of the South that we are chiefly indebted for 
the final triumph in this country of that principle of 
the separation of Church and State which is one of 
the largest contributions in the world to civilization and 
to the church universal. 


From America that distinctive is spreading by 
normal processes to the other nations. State 
Churches will soon be a troubled memory of by- 


[ 94 ] 


The Baptist Distinctive 





gone ages and all will wonder that people profess- 
ing to be Christians could ever have consented to 
pervert government and violate the soul’s func- 
tions in that way. Let us thank God that our 
denomination has been God’s chosen agent in 
making that unspeakable gift to mankind, and 
then let us ask what is the next step we are ap- 
pointed to take as the possessors and advocates 
of that invaluable distinctive. 


[95] 


VI 
THE BAPTIST OBJECTIVE 


Now what is our Objective, the goal toward 
which we have been traveling along the pathway 
of our distinctive? 

It is simple, unmistakably clear, and inescapa- 
bly imperative. That goal is nothing less than 
seeing the whole world in possession of that dis-— 
tinctive whole, not a part of the world in pos- 


session of it whole, nor the whole world in. 


possession of it in part, but the whole world 
in possession of it whole. 


1. Why Pursue This Objective 


There are six reasons why we must do it. 

(1) That the distinctive exists, not as an in- 
teresting and valuable possession of a group, but 
as one of the necessaries of human life. The 
whole world must have it whole because the 
wholeness of the world is impossible without it. 
Mankind was made for it, and it exists for man- 
kind. Some one must give it to the whole race, 
and evidently the body of people who now have it 
whole and have had the responsibility of giving 
it its present vogue, is the very body of people 
to continue that task until it is done. If they do 
not, God will be under the necessity of raising 
up some other body to take the task from our 


[ 96 | 


The Baptist Objective 





faithless hands. How much of the world does 
not have it now? All who have not the gospel of 
Christ, and that means nearly a billion people. 
That is a wide and fascinating field for our en- 
deavor. Even among those who have had the 
gospel, if there is a group that is a State Church 
elsewhere, they have not the idea whole; if there 
is any practising baptism as a means of salvation 
of old or young, they have it not; if any use the 
two substitutes which grew out of the supersti- 
tion that baptism is essential to salvation, or if 
they baptize babies, or if they are under an over- 
head control instead of practising the original 
autonomy of the local church, they do not have 
it whole, even though they may have much of 
the very gospel itself. No, the world is not yet in 
possession of it by any means. And the integrity, 
the wholeness, of the world requires that we or 
some other body shall put it in possession of 
this distinctive. 

(2) The wholeness of the gospel requires that 
we do that very thing. It is an integral part of 
the gospel. You cannot take out Christ’s words, 
“Call no man master on earth, for one is your 
Master, even Christ,” and leave the gospel whole. 
That also requires missions. We must be the 
most missionary body of people on earth. God 
seems to have made a special ruling that the 
gospel should go to the heathen nations with that 
essential in it, for did he not start modern mis- 
sions through William Carey, who was the first 
to take the gospel to India’s teeming millions? 


[97 ] 


You and Your Church 


And did he not inaugurate foreign missions by 
Americans through Adoniram Judson who, 
though brought up in another faith, was led to 
accept the Baptist distinctive while reading his 
Bible on board the ship in which he was sailing 
to Burma, so that he had to change church afhlia- 
tions at once and then arouse our people to or- 
ganize a missionary society to support the work? 
Can we think of it in any other way than that 
God wanted the gospel with that integral idea in 
it at the start in India and Burma? 

(3) Lhe wholeness of Jesus’ purpose, which is 
God’s purpose, for mankind requires that they 
have this distinctive whole. As some one has 
analyzed it, his purpose for the world religiously 
is a world of worshipers and doers of the Father's 
will; politically, a world of equals; socially, a 
world of brothers; industrially, a world of co- 
laborers and comrades. That is impossible with- 
out our distinctive, by whomsoever it may be be- 
stowed upon the world. The world situation at 
this very moment is calling mutely but insistently 
for that reign of Christ. The cure for the ills of 
our modern life is Christ, and Christ is impos- 
sible without the thing that he requires, namely, 
that people have him alone as Master and have 
each other as brothers—“ all ye are brethren.” 

(4) The wholeness of our commission requires 
that we do so. A commission takes account of 
the things essential in it and the time required to 
perform it. We have procured and apparently 
secured certain rights for the world at large, in- 


[ 98 ] 


The Baptist Objective 





cluding ourselves and those who at first were un- 
willing to grant us our rights, but the inclusive 
work is not yet done, and the time for which our 
commissions was given us is not all spent. 

(5) Lhe wholeness of other Christian bodies 
who are doing great, constructive work for the 
world demands that we bestow this distinctive 
on them. We have had discussions and contro- 
versies with them in order to win triumphs over 
them, but we must now approach them as brothers 
with something to bestow on them which we 
have found to have special value. We may tell 
them how much of a blessing it has all been to 
us, and that we wish them to have the benefit of 
it. Our purpose and spirit must be Christly. 
Those bodies that allow the ideas and ceremonies 
which came in with the several interferences with 
that distinctive, need it. It would add to their 
already great value to the world. 

(6) But I now come to the very greatest of 
all the reasons for bestowing this distinctive in 
its wholeness upon the whole world, and that is 
that the wholeness of Christianity depends on it. 
When I speak of a whole Christianity I mean a 
united or a reunited Christendom. And by a re- 
united Christendom I mean that union of all the 
forces of Christianity in one great body for which 
we all pray and many hope. 

There are several things necessary if we are 
ever to have church union. 

First of all, we must recognize the fact that we 
‘now have Christian unity. All Christians are one 


[99 ] 


You and Your Church 





in Christ by virtue of being in Christ and not by 
virtue of being in any one church or in a com- 
bined church. If you were born again in the 
heart of Africa and had never heard of any other 
Christian than the one who brought you to Christ, 
you would be one with all other Christians be- 
cause you would sustain exactly the same essential 
relation to Christ and other Christians that you 
would sustain if you knew a very large number of 
them and were active in all the great enterprises 
of the kingdom of Christ. | 

There are three tremendous figures of speech 
which show Christ’s relation to his disciples: He 
the vine and they the branches vitally connected 
with him and with each other; he the head, and 
they the body, all members not only of him but of 
each other; he the chief corner-stone, and they 
living stones laid down on him and all growing 
together and constituting the glorious temple of 
a redeemed humanity. As soon as any one is a 
Christian he automatically becomes a member of 
Christ and of the other Christians. 

So Christian unity is a fact because there are 
Christians. Yet many people are saying that 
Christ’s prayer to the Father that they may all 
be one is kept from being answered by the re- 
fusal of people to get into one great church, usu- 
ally the church to which those particular people 
belong. There is unity now, for unity is of the 
spirit, union of the letter; unity is internal and 
vital, while union is external and more or less 
mechanical; unity is involuntary and a matter of 


[ 100 ] 


The Baptist Objective 


the vital breath, while union is voluntary and a 
matter of arrangement. To be sure, union must 
be a matter of thought and of loyalty to Christ, 
but it is not Christian unity and can only come 
where there is real unity of spirit. 

Secondly, we must recognize the fact that we 
now have much Christian and church cooperation. 
The Federation of Churches is often a useful 
thing. It enables churches to work together in 
general and special activities and to reenforce 
each other. It has rectified some of its earlier 
mistakes. Some of its workers used to feel called 
on to become propagandists for church union 
without regard to the autonomy of the groups 
working together. But it may serve a fine pur- 
pose. There are other forms of interdenomina- 
tional fellowship and cooperation which are valu- 
able. Let us thank God for them and keep on 
erowing together. | 

Thirdly, there can be no church union on known 
departures from the teachings of our Guide-book. 
Go back and carefully note the five respects in 
which the great distinctive has been interfered 
with, and ask yourself the question, how one who 
recognizes all the facts of the case can deliberately 
go into a union which endorses those violations 
of the teachings of the Word and of the essential 
functions of human nature. 

To be a bit more specific, here are several ques- 
tions that must be settled by the coalescing bodies : 
_ The question of church polity will have to be 
decided on. There are three general types of 


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You and Your Church 


church government to be found. One is the pre- 
latical. It is based chiefly on the office of bishop. 
In the New Testament there are three words 
which designate what we call the ministry, 
“bishop” “elder,” and “ pastor,’ though they 
indicate different phases of that multiform re- 
lationship. That the words bishop and elder were 
used of the same office is clear from Paul’s letter 
to Titus (1: 5-7) to appoint “elders in every 
city...if any man is blameless... for the bishop 
must be blameless as God’s steward;” and in. 
Peter’s First Epistle, fifth chapter, in which he 
exhorts the elders and says he is their fellow elder 
and in effect calls them pastors, which means 
shepherds of the flock. The Greek word epis- 
copos, translated “ bishop,’ means overseer and 
refers to the executive work of the minister; the 
Greek word presbuteros means “elder” and 
refers to the advisory and instructive work of the 
minister; the word poimen, translated “ pastor,” 
means ‘shepherd,’ and refers to the personal 
care which the minister is to bestow on the people 
who are his flock. The three words support and 
complete each other and indicate the manifold 
nature of the minister’s relationships and minis- 
try. Doctor Lightfoot, of the Church of Eng- 
land, proves by careful interpretation of the 
Scriptures that the two words, bishop and elder, 
designated one and the same office in the New 
Testament. 

By the prelatical type of church government I 
mean the episcopal. It is called prelatical, which 


[ 102 ] 


The Baptist Objective 





is the Latin word for “ preferred,’’ because there 
was one preferred group, and that was the minis- 
try, not in its wholeness as composed of bishop 
(overseer), elder, and shepherd, but in its single 
phase of overseership. That overhead control 
varies from the perfect autocracy of the Roman 
Catholic Church, in which the officers claim to 
speak and act as rulers in God’s place, to the 
most democratic form of it in the Methodist 
Church, where the overhead control is at its low- 
est, though it is there. 

Shall the united church have that form of 
organization? If so, we cannot retain our dis- 
tinctive whole. 

A second form of polity is the presbyterial, 
which is built upon the eldership and has far less 
of the overhead control than has the episcopal 
type. Shall the united church have that form 
of government? If so, our distinctive cannot be 
maintained whole. 

The third form of government is the congrega- 
tional, in which the authority resides entirely in 
the people composing the local group, not coming 
down from an overhead body but arising from the 
constituting body, a real democracy of soul. If 
one individual has as much inherent right to deal 
personally with God and direct his own life as 
any other individual, so one group has as much 
inherent right as any other group and cannot, in 
the nature of life itself, both natural and Chris- 
tian, be under the control of any other group or 
set of men. That must be regarded as settled. 


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You and Your Church 


The relation of the various groups to each other 
is that of voluntary cooperation in extending the 
kingdom of Christ over mankind. Does any 
“church union” involve the surrender of that 
basic and vital principle? Then we should lose 
our distinctive, and some one would have to re- 
cover and reestablish it. 

A second question that will have to be settled 
in the united church is that of the initial cere- 
mony. Shall it be baptism or the substitutes that 
owe their origin to the superstition that baptism 
is a saving rather than a symbolical ordinance, 
or shall it be all three? We could not interfere 
with the freedom of any group to use those sub- 
stitutes if they so wish, but we cannot make use 
of them or endorse the use of them in the church 
to which we should belong. This position is not 
a matter of prejudice, but of principle. If we 
surrender, we do not surrender baptism but the 
distinctive that lies back of it and requires it. 

A third question: Who shall be baptized and 
become members of the composite church, pro- 
fessed believers, or babes, or both? Even though 
we may not consider baptism as a means of sav- 
ing the babies we shall not accept that interfer- 
ence with the working of our universal distinc- 
tive. Only one who has personally died to sin 
and risen to a new life can obey Christ in the 
ordinance which assumes and declares that. I 
once baptized a young man who was not converted 
at the time. Soon afterward he saw his mistake, 
accepted Christ and was baptized again. But the 


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The Baptist Objective 





first time it was not the burial of a dead man, a 
man who had died to sin, nor was it the resurrec- 
tion of a living man, but of one still dead in sin. 
No one who was immersed before becoming an 
actual Christian has been baptized in reality 
though he has been in form. 

The propagation of this principle 1s an essential 
move in the direction of church union, an end 
most ardently desired by many people. 

A fourth question must be faced, and that is 
the question of the Lord’s Supper. There are 
several views of that wonderful memorial. 

First is the view that the bread and wine are 
changed by the blessing of the minister into the 
actual, literal body and blood of Jesus. That view 
was developed by the Church of Rome and is 
called transubstantiation, meaning a change of 
substance. It is one of the reasons why the priest 
drinks the wine, for it would not do to lose a 
single drop of that precious blood, as might hap- 
pen when passing it around among the people, 
while the people eat the bread. Shall the com- 
posite church accept that view? If they do, our 
distinctive is gone. 

There is a second view called consubstantia- 
tion. Martin Luther invented this. He denied 
that the bread and wine were changed into the 
veritable, literal body and blood of Jesus, but 
affirmed his “ real presence ’’ there, ‘‘ in, with, and 
under the bread and wine,” and that it was a 
-means of grace, because you actually partook of 
him. When told that Christ was only at the right 


£105 ] 


You and Your Church 





hand of God he replied that the right hand of 
God was everywhere. If we adopt this view, that 
Christ exists “ along with ” the substance, we sur- 
render our distinctive. 

A third view is the sacramental, that the ordi- 
nances are channels of grace. This is held by the 
Church of England. All these forms are really 
due to a sort of sacerdotalism, the existence of 
a sacred order in whom the church really centers, 
so that the church practically means the officials. 
Everything is created by the apostles and their 
successors, so the argument runs; the priest is 
ordained by them; without the priest there can be 
no full worship of God; the sacraments, baptism 
and the Lord’s Supper, are the means that must 
create and maintain the spiritual life. The Epis- 
copal Church says baptism is “the great sacra- 
ment of our regeneration,’ and the Supper, or 
Eucharist, as they call it, is termed “our chief 
means of communion with our Lord. Dr. R. J. 
Campbell puts it thus: 

The incarnation, the atonement, the extension of both 
in the sacraments, the ministry which guards them and 
the visible society itself as the sphere of sacrificial grace, 
all these seem to me to imply each other. 

John Calvin taught a modified view that, while 
the bread and wine are signs of the body and 
blood of Christ, they are the instrumental means 
of his presence and the Supper is therefore a 
means of grace. 

Zwingli was nearer the truth in saying that the 
Supper is a memorial or remembrance of the 


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The Baptist Objective 





sacrifice for sins offered once for all by Christ, 
and that it is not a continuation or repetition of 
the original sacrifice of Christ as taught by the 
Roman Church and by others in the modified ways 
I have pointed out; but Zwingli did not grasp the 
idea fully. 

_ The true view is that it is a symbol, purely 
that, nothing more, just as baptism is a symbol, 
baptism symbolizing the emergence of the new 
life out of death and the Supper symbolizing the 
feeding of that new life on Christ “ who is our 
life,’ who said he was the bread of life “ that 
came down from heaven.” When he said, ‘‘ This 
is my body,” “‘ This is my blood,’ he used a 
metaphor, which is an unexpanded simile. If he 
had said, “ This is like my body,” etc., it would 
have been a simile, which is an expanded meta- 
phor, and would have meant precisely the same 
thing. 

The other views that I have indicated, are not 
only foreign to the Scriptures but to the basic 
ideas of life and grace. To make the ordinances 
channels through which God’s grace can flow 
to us “limits the universality of divine grace,” 
as Doctor Fairbairn points out. 

The Supper is an object-lesson. It helps you 
to form a mental picture of the Christ in giving 
himself for your redemption and nourishment. It 
enshrines that truth, keeps it clear in the mind, 
_ appeals to the heart’s gratitude and devotion and 
stimulates the desire to be more worthy of it all. 
The soul grows hungry and thirsty in your activ- 


[ 107 ] 


You and Your Church 





ities and that drives you to him, so that this ob- 
ject-lesson makes it all vivid. 

Shall we take the transubstantiation or con- 
substantiation or the sacramental view, or shall 
we have the simple, clear, and common-sense truth 
as taught inthe Word? That matter will have to 
be settled if we have a composite church. No 
question is ever settled at all until it is settled 
aright. To surrender the truth that it is a symbol, 
an object-lesson, a sort of keepsake, is to initiate | 
a process that will destroy our distinctive and 
necessitate its recovery and reinstatement in the 
world by some other body of people. 


2. Difficulties in the Way 


There are obstinate dificulties in the way of 
our success, some to be found within our own 
body, some without. 

(1) Lhe Outside Diticulties. If we get our 
distinctive accepted by the whole world it will 
be through their voluntary acceptance of it, not 
under any sort of compulsion, for we are not able 
to use compulsion, we have none to use, and com- 
pulsion of others would destroy the distinctive. 
To accept this would require the abandonment by 
them of what now stands in the way of it. Here 
are some things that stand in the way: 

Habit for one thing. After practising the two 
substitutes for baptism and practising infant bap- 
tism for centuries no church will find it an easy 
task to change its habits. 

Tradition is another difficulty. The ideas and 


[ 108 ] 





The Baptist Objective 





practises of the denominations have been handed 
down through generations and, in some instances, 
for centuries, and tradition has its influence over 
us all. 

Prejudice stands in the way, and it does not 
characterize one group alone, but we all have it. 
‘The conflicts of the past generated prejudices, and 
the echoes of those stormy days salute the eager 
ear even now. We may deny to each other the 
respect and fraternal regard to which all true 
Christians are entitled, and we may wrongly ques- 
tion each other’s sincerity. We may find it dif- 
ficult to go to them in the right spirit, and they 
may not always receive our approaches in the 
most loving way, because of prejudices growing 
out of the past and out of misrepresentations 
made on both sides. 

Another difficulty is the spirit of controversy 
rather than of counsel, of conflict rather than of 
cooperation. Whatever we do in trying to put 
others in possession of the distinctive we must 
do as friends and not as foes, in the spirit of 
comity and not of conflict, with the desire to pro- 
mote truth rather than to win a triumph. 

Still another difficulty, already implied, is found 
in imstitutions and organizations that have been 
constructed on principles in vital conflict with our 
distinctive and whose very existence depends on 
forbidding their devotees to receive this distinc- 
_ tive or even investigate it. Such institutions re- 
quire the “ closed mind ”’ in their adherents. The 
historic, gigantic instance of this is the Church 


[ 109 ] 


You and Your Church 


of Rome. The powers that brought about the in- 
terferences with the working of our distinctive 
are the powers that brought into its development 
the Catholic Church. Built upon those perver- 
sions of the New Testament church it has through 
the centuries perpetuated them by union with the 
State, wherever that has been possible, and has 
never yet dissolved that unholy union except 
under compulsion. That Church is not suscep- 
tible to change, but many individuals within its © 
ranks may be brought to see and receive the dis- 
tinctive. Many of its devotees are simple-minded 
and conscientious, but its essential structure 
makes its own reformation and its reconstruction 
on a Biblical and gospel pattern apparently im- 
possible. 

There are other tyrannies that require the 
“closed mind,” and they erect almost insuperable 
barriers against any approach to their people with 
this truth. But there is a way to meet it. We 
may so saturate the public mind with the truth 
as to lessen the success of their propaganda, and 
we may win numberless individuals among them. 

Another difficulty is the prevailing feeling 
against the preaching of “ doctrine.’ “ Doctrinal 
preaching ” is very much disliked. But two things 
may be said. One is that a “ doctrine ”’ is a teach- 
ing, and teaching is always in order. Besides, 
doctrine should be lived in such a way as to im- 
press people that it is vital rather than merely 
“doctrinaire.” The prejudice is not: so much 
against a teaching as against what is called “ theo- 


[110] 


The Baptist Objective 


logical’ teaching in technical terms. We have 
had enough of these terms. Let us away with 
them. The “common people” are glad to hear 
the truth I am speaking of when told in a straight- 
forward way. They wonder why we do not do 
more of it. 

(2) Here are some of the Dificulties we find 
Within Our Own Body, besides the prejudices 
I have alluded to and the feelings left by the old 
experiences of controversy: 

a. After centuries of struggle with other re- 
ligious bodies over our right and the right of all 
men to have complete religious liberty, we are 
glad to rest and be “ at ease in Zion.” But it may 
be said that there are sleepless enemies of that 
truth, and they are now at work in an effort to 
control sacred interests in every country. 

b. After a high degree of success in bestowing 
the distinctive on our North American Continent, 
and seeing it spread over the world, and seeing 
State Churches give way before it, we may feel 
that others have it in such degree that they will 
not need any further aid from us. But already 
I have pointed out that the idea in its wholeness 
is not in possession of any other strong body 
of people, and perhaps a billion people know 
strictly nothing at all about it. 

c. There is a very reasonable desire on our part 
to enter more deeply into Christian fellowship 
_ and cooperation with all Christians and show 
them that we are more than mere fighters and 
wranglers, that we are their colaborers and com- 


[111] 


You and Your Church 





rades. The result of that is a silence on the sub- 
ject of the distinctive which is unfaithfulness to 
it, and which is a surprise to all who come to 
learn how vital and fascinating it is. If we 
continue to prize laziness above loyalty, fellow- 
ship with others above fidelity to them, our un- 
finished task will be taken out of our hands and 
given to others. The truth is, we ourselves have 
been saying so little about it our own people are 
not informed on the subject, and our friends of 
other churches are surprised at learning what it 
is, surprised at the simple and common-sense and 
fascinating character of it, and surprised at us 
for our silence about such a remarkable and vital 
matter. Weare forming habits of fatal reticence 
on that particular subject that it will be difficult 
to break up. | 

d. A fourth difficulty is the presence of prob- 
lems among us which sometimes bulk large and 
seem formidable. But a problem is a sign of life. 
Some one has said that youth is rich in unsolved 
problems, and they constitute its charm and its 
promise. When any one ceases to have problems 
he is dead, though he may not know it. Ours 
are the problems that always grow out of a de- 
mocracy, and are integral in a spiritual democ- 
racy. Here are some of them: | 

(a) The problem of liberty and leadership. 
The primary need of any cause is leaders. But, 
when leadership becomes drivership or rulership, 
it lessens the liberty of the individual who is 
ruled. Yet, in spite of its perils, leadership is 


[112] 


The Baptist Objective 





essential. An autocracy can do fairly well with- 
out leaders, for it centers in a ruling family or 
in institutions with fixed habits and traditions 
that hold the subjects under control and get re- 
sults. Our churches are not carried to success 
by autocratic officials, or by an infallible institu- 
tion, or by mystical ceremonies and ritual, but by 
leaders chosen by the people themselves, who in 
turn hold the leaders responsible to them, their 
equals and the source of their power. We have 
the double problem of discovering them, then of 
preparing and following them. We: face the 
manifold danger of failing to secure such leader- 
ship, or of allowing it to become tyranny or of 
failing to follow it. Those perils have made us 
the more watchful. We have always had capa- 
ble leaders, and we shall always be under the 
necessity of praying for and utilizing them. 

(b) Democracy and discipline has always been 
one of our problems. All discipline is self-dis- 
cipline. We debate and express our individual 
views, as is perfectly right, and then accept the 
will of the majority. One result of the discus- 
sion and, maybe, wrangling is that we all become 
educated by that very process. The very best op- 
portunity in the world for self-discipline is offered 
by a spiritual democracy. 

(c) There is the problem of spirituality and 
culiure. That used to be a more severe difficulty 
with us. Our pioneers usually sprang up from 
among the people, often without much culture. 
And, because the instruments of culture were 


[ 113 ] 


You and Your Church 


usually in the hands of the worldly State Church, 
they often had a dislike for it. There is a con- 
stant tide of increase from the uncultivated, the 
“common people,” and we have always had the 
untrained among us. But we have been solving 
that problem from the beginning in our country 
and the pioneers are engaged in doing so every- 
where. In early days in America the fathers felt 
the need of a better-trained ministry, and most of 
our colleges were founded with that as their aim. 
Some of those schools thus founded are: Brown, 
1764; Colby, 1815; Colgate, 1819; Shurtleff, 
1827; Georgetown, 1829; Acadia, 1831; the 
others in due time. Our theological seminaries 
were founded, beginning with Colgate, 1820; 
Newton, 1825; Rochester, 1850; Louisville, 
1859; Crozer, 1867; MacMaster, Kansas City, © 
Southwestern, Berkeley, Northern, Eastern fol- 
lowing later; and several also among the Negro 
Baptists. 

We are hearing the call for better equipment 
and answering it. As our fathers met the prob- 
lems of their day it seems hardly possible that we 
should be less noble than they in perfecting the 
schools we now have and in establishing others 
as they may be needed, for we have greater wealth 
than they had, and we live in an atmosphere more 
favorable to the establishment and support of 
schools. No doubt many men of wealth and con- 
secration will be putting larger and still larger 
sums into the establishment and equipment of all 
needed schools and benevolent institutions. 


[114] 


The Baptist Objective 





We have already produced men of letters, and 
women too, and real spirituality is not incompati- 
ble with the very highest culture of the soul in 
mental, social, and esthetic power, else it would 
be a reflection on our Maker. We see that. We 
are solving the problem. 

(d) There is the problem of socializing the in- 
dividual. In some nations the social entity has 
been everything, the individual nothing. The 
integral idea in any democracy is the value of the 
individual. In an autocracy he may be ignored. 
Social culture must never destroy the individual- 
ity. Two things are strictly required—that the 
individual be socialized, be made one of a number, 
and that he be still more of an individual with 
all his values increased. Individualty must come 
to its best when socialized—that is the law of 
God. While we recognize the right of each and 
every member of the church to an equal part with 
the others in all privileges and work, we must put 
each one into that team-work which is his destiny. 

(e) We face another problem, that of unifying 
ourselves. here is a threefold cure for all the 
ills we feel so keenly in our ranks today: To 
preach Christ fully, the Christ of the New Testa- 
ment, the Christ of history, the Christ of Chris- 
tian experience; to set forth the Baptist distinc- 
tive in its essence and clarity, stripping it of all 
accretions, and leaving it in all its wonderful fas- 
cination to appeal to the souls of men; to lead 
our people to undertake in cooperation the largest, 
most exacting tasks at home and abroad. 


[115] 


You and Your Church 





3. Results of Seeking the Objective 


Immeasurable results will follow our effort to 
discharge our sacred responsibilities to God, to 
our own constituency and to our fellow men 
everywhere. It will give us a new missionary en- 
thusiasm. Jf we are to bestow our distinctive 
on all who have it not, we shall try to find those 
who are without it. That will lead us to the 
discovery that there are about one and three- 
quarter billions of people in the world, and that 
at least one billion, or more than half, of them 
belong to other religions than the Christian. The 
dazzling numbers and distressing needs stir the 
missionary instincts within us. They need Christ, 
every one of them needs him, and, in their rela- 
tional life, they must have this great truth of. 
ours. Let us once see that, and a new missionary 
ardor which can never be cooled will glow and 
grow within us. Deficits in our missionary trea- 
suries will never again be known. 

It will restore the old passion for saving the 
lost, and it will stimulate our new evangelism. 
The old motive for bringing people to know our 
Saviour and Lord will have a new setting and 
reenforcement. The first duty of each Christian 
to his Lord is to “ go”’ and find those who have 
him not, whether it is to go across the room or 
across the street or across the State or across the 
ocean. It will mean personal evangelism. 

It will awaken a new sense of our stewardship, 
stewardship of our time, our talent, our material 


[ 116 ] 


The Baptist Objective 





treasures—the trusts committed to us to be im- 
parted to others. 

It will compel us to cultivate and coordinate all 
the virtues, to appreciate and appropriate those 
virtues which our friends and fellow Christians 
of other denominations who have not our distinc- 
tive whole, have cultivated. We see how they 
have been able to make up for that lack in a 
measure. One denomination has given aggressive 
and emotional energy to evangelism and adminis- 
tration and has done wonders even with its handi- 
cap. We may imitate that energy and enthusiasm. 
and, with our great distinctive, should achieve 
much more. Another denomination has pursued 
methods of education and discipline and reverent 
public worship with rich results. With the ad- 
vantage of this great distinctive of ours why 
should we not equal or even surpass them? Still 
others hold their people to stedfast efforts with 
liberal use of ritual and education and esthetic 
and social culture; and there is nothing in our 
distinctive to prevent the largest possible use of 
all means of culture and worship if we make the 
proper discriminations. 

To be sure different temperaments move in dif- 
ferent directions, but all may move under the 
domination of this principle so essential in the 
total life of mankind. There is not a high form 
of true culture, whether esthetic, intellectual, ar- 
tistic, or social, or any possible degree of Chris- 
tian activity which need be omitted or lessened 
by us who cherish that principle. In the old days 


(4173) 


You and Your Church 





of controversy our fathers sometimes felt distaste 
for their methods of culture and activity. But we 
shall emulate them in their virtues and thus give 
our distinctive a new opportunity to embody itself 
in all the forms of perfection of which we dream. 
It will stir the motive of Christian fellowship as 
we strive to crown our fellow Christians of other 
denominations with what has been so rich a pos- 
session of our own. 

This will be a unifying power within the indi- 
vidual because it searches the soul, awakens re- 
sponsibility, and binds him to Christ; a unifying 
power within each church and the denomination 
because it gives us fellowship in the unvarying 
truth of life; a unifying power within the ranks 
of Christendom, for it furnishes the motive and 
means for organization that will have an un- 
movable basis and will leave each free to inter- 
pret the Bible as his experiences require. It will 
relieve Christianity of those unbiblical usages 
which still bear witness to the superstitions out of 
which they arose. 

Our days of highest prosperity were when we 
bore witness to the distinctive without flinching, 
even though it involved us in controversy. But 
greater days are ahead of us. We are to learn 
that we can do more with our voluntary coopera- 
tion than can those who are under overhead con- 
trol. We are yet to see greater gifts for missions 
than we have ever had, greater educational in- 
stitutions than we now have, greater hospitals 
and homes for the needy and greater freedom 


[118 ] 


The Baptist Objective 





than were ever known before. Our distinctive 
has shown what it can do in times of trouble and 
persecution. Let us give it a chance in the time 
of peace and prosperity. 

A new art is needed, and the time is ripe for it, 
the art of the Advocate of our Distinctive. The 
advocacy must be personal rather than profes- 
sional, practised by the laymen as well as by the 
ministers. The advocates of many cults are do- 
ing this. They go into homes, raise questions, 
and then try to settle them in their own way. 
They are always ready to talk to neighbors and 
friends. about their remarkable ideas, and thus 
they win many converts. Our aim must be dif- 
ferent—simply to put them in possession of the 
most simple and common-sense and Biblical and 
practical idea known, and to do it without a desire 
for victory or for converts, but for the enrich- 
ment of our friends with this great truth. 

Our efforts to put the whole world in posses- 
sion of our distinctive whole need not be, should 
not be, controversial. Controversies usually arise 
out of different interpretations of the Scriptures, 
and there are no such differences in this case in 
the matters concerned. The three lines of inquiry 
have been conducted by experts of all denomina- 
tions and of no denomination, and they have all 
made their final reports—as to the meaning of 
the words under discussion, as to the original 
activities and circumstances to which the words 
apply, and as to the practise in the early centuries. 
In other words, the dictionary-makers, lexicog- 


[119] 


You and Your Church 





raphers, have forever settled for us the meaning 
of the three Greek words—baptizo, to immerse; 
rhantizo, to sprinkle; echeo, to pour—and the im- 
possibility of an interchange of meaning between 
the three or any two of them; the interpreters of 
the Scriptures, exegetes, have settled for all people 
the use which the Scriptures make of those words 
so that its purpose in using them and the context 
in which they are used make the meaning of the 
dictionary as clear as sunlight; the historians have 
told us when and why changes were made. All 
of these matters are settled. We need not argue. 
We need only say: “ You have consulted your 
dictionary and read your Bible and your his- 
torian; now return to the abandoned truths, let 
us close the breach made by departures from 
those truths so that we may have the old fellow- 
ships restored.” 

We have been silent about it so long that many 
of our own people are wondering what it is we 
really hold which makes us different from others. 
We have been tired of controversy and have 
wanted to show the others that we can be “ good 
fellows ’ and cooperate with them, That is right 
so far, but we have withheld from our own people 
what they have a right to know and sorely need 
to know. 

And people of other denominations are won- 
dering what it is that makes us different from 
them, and why it is that we never say anything 
about it. Some of them imagine and even say - 
that we do not think a man can be saved without 


[ 120 ] 


The Baptist Objective 





being baptized when, as a matter of fact, no one 
teaching that idea about baptism is a Baptist at all. 

When they hear our story, simply and frankly 
and fraternally told, they are usually charmed 
with it, and they always wonder why people who 
hold such a fascinating and essential truth are not 
telling everybody about it. 

Surprising results will always follow the right 
sort of advocacy of it. I have had some delight- 
ful experiences in telling it both in public and in 
private. When I am to speak on it in my own 
pulpit I usually announce it a week or two in 
advance and frankly tell the people what they 
may expect. I also say that I am announcing it 
in advance so that any one who is anxious to 
hear such a discussion may be sure to come and 
that any one who does not care to hear it may 
have the opportunity of staying away. No one 
has ever seemed to stay away purposely, and I 
have never failed to hear surprise and delight ex- 
pressed at the fascinating character of our views. 
[I give one instance. 

In a certain city where I was preaching a young 
couple came, she a Baptist and he a member of 
another church. She brought her letter, and he 
became a regular attendant with her. They area 
cultured and lovable couple. I called on them 
one evening and, when something was said about 
his attending, I remarked, “I wish you could 
come all the way with us.” ‘I am thinking of 
it,’ he replied. Then I began to tell him what 
really made one a Baptist. At once he spoke up 


[121 ] 


You and Your Church 


and said: ‘‘ Yes, I heard you on that subject. I 
was there when you announced it in advance, and 
I said to myself I must not miss it, for | wanted 
to be informed. I heard it, and it answered to 
something within my own soul.”’ The result was 
that I baptized him in a little while and he is now 
a prominent and useful member of that church. 

We have the most popular idea on earth. The 
world is ready for it now as never before. 
Preachers and teachers and all the members may 
win new victories for Christ and for humanity by 
informing themselves carefully, living it sensibly, 
and advocating it wisely and lovingly. 


[ 122 ] 


Vil 
INSTRUMENTALITIES AND AGENCIES 


When you joined the church you found in- 
strumentalities and agencies already devised for 
accomplishing its mission to its members and to 
the outside world. They were worked out in 
experience and may not have been perfect. In 
fact, there was at once opened up to you an op- 
‘portunity and an obligation to improve all the 
methods in use by the church. One of the bene- 
fits of our democracy is that each one may use 
his own ideas and add to those that are already 
at work. Methods are shaped by the combined 
wisdom of the group and may be constantly re- 
shaped to fit constantly growing enterprises. 


1. Local Work 


The local work of your church is fourfold: 

(1) It 1s evangelistic. That is simply saying 
that, when you become a Christian, you want to 
help some one else find Christ. I take that as the 
first work of the church, to be preceded, of 
course, by teaching and all the other means of 
getting the truth of Christ before the people and 
into their minds. There are three ways of doing 
this work: through the appeal of the preacher in 
his preaching; through the application of the 


[123] 


You and Your Church 





truth in the teaching service of the church, the 
Sunday school; through the personal efforts of 
the members, including, of course, the minister. 
Your church is pledged to win to Christ every 
one within the sphere of its influence. As long as 
a single unconverted person is within its reach, 
that sort of work is unfinished and is therefore 
imperative. 

(2) It ts a disciplinary work, that is, it is a 
work of making disciples in the fullest sense. 
The church disciplines by educating its members. 
It has some sort of educational system, even 
though it may be only a loosely organized Sun- 
day school. Classes in the Bible at the Sunday 
school; classes in missions, whether at Sunday 
school or separate from it; and classes in methods 
of study and teaching and work are simply im- 
perative in these days of experts in all lines of 
work and study. The church trains not only by 
education in the Bible and missions and methods 
of work, but by assigning work to the members 
and aiding them in the actual doing of it. That 
work may be individual or cooperative; it may 
be wholly within the church, or largely out in the 
community, or ina more distant part of the world 
field. 

It also disciplines by watch-care, one over the 
other, the older helping the younger by example 
and suggestion and companionship, the more 
mature putting their strength at the service of 
the weaker. It disciplines by its ideals. It dis- 
ciplines by guidance, correction, appreciation. 


[ 124] 


Instrumentalities and Agencies 





(3) Lhe church coordinates its members in 
the great enterprise of putting the whole world in 
possession of its Saviour and King, whose right it 
is to rule over the world and over every person 
in it. That will include local work and com- 
munity work of several kinds. 

Every church must have its organized school 
studying the Bible and missions and the history 
of Christianity and all the methods of work that 
have commended themselves to its intelligence. 
If your church has not such a school, it may be 
you are the one to take the initiative in it or to 
suggest and help establish it. 

(4) A fourth enterprise of your church is the 
uplift of your whole community, not only 
through the influence of its members on it, but 
by means of special effort in Christianizing its 
laws, caring for the needy, educating its citizens, 
and driving out its evils. 


2. The Wider Work 


1. Your church bears tts part in the coopera- 
tive work of all the churches of the whole denom- 
ination. Itis one of a group of churches forming 
a District Association, which meets annually. 
That Association has no authority over the 
churches. On the contrary, it is the creature of 
the churches, and they have complete authority 
over it. It surveys the field occupied by the 
churches composing it, hears reports of what is 
done by each church, takes an outlook upon the 
whole State or Province in which it is located, 


[125] 


You and Your Church 





and upon the nation and the world as well, out- 
lines suggestive programs for work in the local 
churches, and stimulates them with information 
and hints as to methods of work and as to their 
vital fellowship in that work. 

For each State or Province there is an or- 
ganization: which serves for its field a purpose 
similar to that of the District Association, while, 
for a whole nation, or a large part of it, there 1s 
a still larger organization. The value of these 
organizations is that they preserve the voluntary 
principle and add to its force the stimulus of 
combined wisdom and voluntary fellowship. Of 
course human nature is so imperfect that a more 
authoritative control over the churches by some 
overhead body might get larger results at the out- 
set, but not in the outcome. 

Note that these larger bodies promote world-_ 
wide missions, education in each State or Prov- 
ince or nation or mission field, and benevolence of 
various kinds, including social service in some 
form. Get the denominational records and re- 
ports of work done over the whole world. 

(2) The wider work has reference to our co- 
laborers of the other denominations who are do- 
ing a work corresponding to our own. Our re- 
lation to them must be that of sympathy and 
good-will. It will at times be a relation of active 
cooperation. Community work may often re- 
quire not only the individual cooperation of 
Christian people of all the denominations in the 
community, but actual church cooperation, as in 


[126 


Instrumentalities and Agencies 





supporting institutions like the Y. M. C. A., the 
Y. W. C. A., the Red Cross, homes for unfor- 
tunates of different classes, temperance move- 
ments, community-wide evangelism, etc. In 
opening new missions we should consider the 
work being done in a given place by those bodies, 
and should be wise enough to spend our money 
where those most needy will get the benefit of 
it. All this can and must be done with a view 
to fulfilling our mission to give the world the 
whole truth as we see it. We need never be un- 
true to our principles in such work. 


[ 127 ] 





PART III 


YOUR PART 





I 
WHAT YOU ARE TO DO 


You must have a part in this varied and am- 
bitious work of your church, both its local and 
general work. In joining you accepted its scheme 
of work, with such improvements as you and 
others may be able to make in it. Not only a 
part, but your own personal, specific part must 
you have in it. 


1. Why? . 


(1) You will suffer if you do not. You will 
suffer in your own estimate of yourself. You are 
adapted by the new Christian nature and 
prompted by your own Christian impulses to 
have a part in that work and, if you fail to do so 
for any reason whatsoever, you will have an in- 
curable discontent with yourself. You will often 
say to yourself: “ I’m the one who made a cove- 
nant with some good people and am not keeping 
it. Worse still, my covenant expresses profound 
and essential relations with those people, and I 
am living in violation of them.” The conscious- 
ness of not being true to your pledges will cause 
you pain. | 

You will be unhappy if you fail to do your 
part. 


[131] 


You and Your Church 





The one who drifts 

And never lifts 

A burden from the dust, 

Can never know the heartfelt glow 
Which yonder reaper must. 


It will mean disease of the soul—low spirits, 
sour temper, wounded pride, heartache, fatty de- 
generation of the heart, torpid emotions, irregu- 
lar action of the vital processes, wrong blood 
pressure, bad blood, cold heart, religious dys- 
pepsia, bad tongue (very bad!). You will be a 
trouble-maker. You will be apt to become what 
is called a grouch. 

You will suffer in the estimation of others. In 
selecting those on whom they can always depend, 
they will pass you by as not dependable. They 
may even apply to you the repulsive term 
“slacker,” and do so in perfect justice. Your - 
reputation among your brethren is an asset far 
too valuable to give up. : 

(2) The work will suffer. You will lower 
the moral tone of the church. Your coldness 
will lower the temperature 01 the whole body. 
You will lessen its energy and efficiency, for, in 
carrying you, it will carry a useless weight and 
thereby use up power that is needed in doing 
something useful and constructive. You will 
lessen the spiritual value of the church as well 
as its vitality. You will compel the church to 
carry in its system so much undigested matter, 
which is sure to produce in some degree a toxic 
condition. Spiritual disease will afflict the body, 


[ 132 ] 


What You Are to Do 


and the germ center of that disease will be— 
you. 

(3) Some good people will suffer also, for 
there are in the church generous souls who will 
do more than their share in order to do your 
neglected share. Some work will go forever 
undone unless you do it, something that no one 
will know about, no one can get into contact with, 
no one can really do, but you. 

(4) Others outside the church will suffer. 
The volume of the church’s work will be lessened 
and its quality injured. The community will get 
less than it is entitled to. Some people will be 
neglected. The evangelistic, the benevolent, and 
the disciplinary work will suffer, and all who 
would benefit by your efforts will lose through 
your failure to function as a covenant-keeping 
and duty-doing member. 


2. How? 


I said that you are to have a part, and that 
must be your own personal part. 

It means two things. One is that you must do 
many things by yourself and of yourself, such as 
giving your own share of the money to be ex- 
pended and doing the tasks that you alone can do. 
There are opportunities that you alone can see 
and you alone can seize. There are tasks that you 
alone can undertake and perform, words to speak, 
deeds to do, a personal touch to give that no one 
other than yourself can even think of, much 
less do. . 


[133 ] 


You and Your Church 


It also means that you are to do your part of 
the common tasks in the team-work which is so 
necessary. Perhaps you will furnish the idea, 
or the plan, or the directive oversight, and there- 
by make the work of others possible and effective, 
or you may work at some humble part of the task 
which your talents fit you for, while others work 
in the limelight and in the positions of promi- 
nence. 

The team-work in which you are to engage is 
team-work with the whole body, as when you put 
your share of money into the whole sum, or teach 
in the church school, or engage in some special 
campaign. 

It will also be team-work in smaller groups, 
or small communities, or in a small body of 
officers. 

Or it may be team-work with some one person, © 
as Peter and John, Paul and Barnabas, Paul and 
Timothy, Luther and Melancthon, and hundreds 
of teams of two have done. Two ones added 
make two, but place the two ones side by side 
and they made eleven. You and the other man 
by your team-work multiply each other, you com- 
plement, complete each other. 

You are to have a part in every activity of the 
church. You must be an evangelist, a private, 
personal, persistent, loving evangelist. That is 
the highest work of all. It involves so much on 
your part—knowledge of the person whom you 
wish to lead to Christ and an understanding of 
his needs; knowledge of the truths he must have; 


[ 134 ] 


What You Are to Do 





knowledge of the way to state the truths and to 
make the appeal. It involves prayer to God and 
cooperation with the Spirit of God, for it is he 
that worketh in you both to will and to do his 
work, and it is he that convicts men of their need 
of Christ. In winning a person to Christ you 
bring more to him than you can in anything else 
you ever can do for him. You bring Christ and 
all the wonders of the reign of God in the soul. 
The blessings you secure to that person never 
cease to ennoble him. You will often need 
the help of some other Christian in winning 
others. 

When you take part your growth is more com- 
plete and more rapid and your joy is greater. It 
is like the joy that Jesus felt, as it is said, ‘‘ Who 
for the joy that was set before him, endured the 
cross, despising the shame.” It was the joy he 
felt amidst the agonies of Calvary as he thought 
of the millions he would save from sin by suffer- 
ing on the cross. You will help to put that sort 
of spirit into the whole church. 

You will have your part in the educational 
work of the church. There is a place for you, 
and it is your own personal, peculiar place—in 
the Sunday school as a pupil or officer or teacher. 
You will have your place in the missionary work 
of the church, in the missionary studies, and in 
the missionary giving. 

We speak of the benevolent work of the 
church, its contributions to the needy, its ministry 
to the sick and the troubled. Your part in those 


[135 ] 


You and Your Church 





forms of work is awaiting you. It will be your 
own personal work, your part in the organized 
work of the church. 

It will require study and prayer, a ready mind, 
and a loving heart. 


3. Some Suggestions 


(1) Grasp our great distinctive clearly so that 
you will always know when it is disregarded or 
imperiled. 

(2) Be able to explain it to any one, giving a 
reason for the conviction that is in you. 

(3) Be sure to have our total objective before 
you all the time. 

(4) Hold to the distinctive and aim at the ob- 
jective in a large and fraternal rather than in a 
small and jealous spirit. 

(5) Accept your responsibility for the preser- 
vation of this distinctive and the attainment of 
our objective. 

(6) Understand the complete set of gospel 
truths to which this belongs. 

(7) Be ready to undertake the first task that is 
offered to you. 

(8) Be on the lookout for special work that 
you alone can do. 

(9) Familiarize yourself with the work that 
others are doing, in order to find where you can 
assist. 

(10) Do not allow your devotion to the work 
of the church to be affected by circumstances 
without or by your own moods. 


[ 136 ] 


What You Are to Do 


(11) See how much you can do and not how 
little you can get off with. 

(12) Be sure, some time, to do more than you 
are able to do. You will never do all that you 
can do unless you sometimes do more than you 
can do. The very effort to do the impossible, 
if you have confidence in God, will bring to you 
new strength, and that makes the impossible pos- 
sible. God always gives strength when he gives 
a task, and he is sure to give a task greater than 
you are equal to till you put your hand to it and 
find his power energizing you. 

(13) Seek to have a good reputation with your 
fellow Christians, not simply for the sake of 
the reputation, but in order to have a character 
worthy of the reputation and to have the oppor- 
tunity which the reputation will bring you. 

(14) Give the church a good reputation in the 
community. 

(15) Make your own church indispensable in 
the great work of the denomination. 

(16) Have some part, through your church, 
in every form of work which the denomination 
is undertaking in every one of its fields through- 
out the world. 

(17) Avail yourself of all the means of cul- 
ture that the church has devised, and devise others 
if you are able, for the church as well as for 
yourself. 

(18) Have an understanding with yourself 
that you will not only have faith in your fellow 
Christians, but enable them to have complete 


[ 137 ] 


You and Your Church 


faith in you. Faith compels faithfulness. Fidel- 
ity wins confidence. 

(19) Send to your Baptist headquarters and 
get suggestive forms of organization for your 
work. They have outlines of methods for work 
in all departments—Sunday school, men’s work, 
women’s work, young people’s work, junior work. 
Their little pamphlets embody the wisdom of the 
experts. 


[ 138 ] 


IT 


THE POWERS WITH WHICH YOU 
WORK 


1. Speech 


I begin with this because it is the most obvious 
and representative of all your powers. It is a 
distinctive of personality. If you were a cat or 
a dog or an owl or a mule, you would not need 
to “say something,” but, as a human being, the 
first imperative is to speak when you are accosted 
by any one or commanded by the voice of duty. 

Your powers of speech serve the double pur- 
pose of expressing what is in you and imparting 
it to others. You may do that in other ways, but 
this is the superlative way. For that reason we 
are not surprised to find how wonderfully made 
are the organs of speech. The power to convert 
the vibrating air into words and give those words 
such variations in pitch and power and content of 
emotion as to express what your mind thinks, 
your heart feels, your conscience approves, and 
your will determines, is far more marvelous than 
any of the startling inventions of these scientific 
days. 

But that is only half of the wonder. The 
other half is that there are receiving-stations at- 
tuned to your speech which can take in your 


[ 139 ] 


You and Your Church 





words, vibrate to them, and reproduce them in 
souls like your own. It is somewhat like the 
telephone. You speak your words into the re- 
ceiver and that starts the air to vibrating. Those 
vibrations of air are converted into electrical 
vibrations and, flashing along the line with light- 
ning speed, are reconverted into air vibrations at 
the other end, and enter the ear of the listener in 
the original form into which you put what was 
in your mind, imparting the words with their 
pitch and power and feeling—a marvel indeed. 
Remember that in speech you aim to impart as 
well as express. 

In taking your part you have the double plea- 
sure of expressing and imparting, each a joy of a 
high order, especially the latter. 

In addition to the pleasure you give yourself 
there is the discipline through which you take 
yourself. It is a manifold discipline—discrim- 
inating in character, discarding what should 
never be expressed, much less imparted; select- 
ing what is suitable to be expressed at a given > 
time and to a given person or group of persons; 
study of the needs of those to whom you would 
impart a truth or emotion or purpose; controlling 
yourself in the doing of it; effacing yourself in 
the interest of others—a vital discipline in unself- 
ishness and effectiveness. All of this you do in 
the interest of unselfish service to your fellow 
men. 

I am not referring to public speaking especially, 
but to the use of the powers of speech, whether in 


[ 140 ] 


Powers With Which You Work 





public or in private. Perhaps you may be called 
on to be a preacher of the gospel, and in that case 
you will have to use this mighty power both pub- 
licly and privately. The early disciples ‘‘ went 
everywhere, preaching the word,” and the word 
for “ preaching’ is about the same as our word 
“ talking,’ almost the same as “chatting.” You 
are to achieve your part in that wonderful enter- 
prise which we have been considering, by what 
you say, though not in that way alone. 

An instrument capable of setting forth what 
is in you in such way that others can appropriate 
it and convert it into similar thought and emotion 
and purpose, is a power that can wreck as well 
as upbuild. It can awaken others to a sense of 
their needs and their possibilities, can energize 
and encourage and fraternize and humanize and 
divinize them; yet, on the other hand, it can ex- 
press your very worst till it will turn on you to 
derange and even demonize you, while it will chill 
and cut and stab and poison and wreck those to 
whom you impart it. 

Therefore, train the powers with which you 
express yourself in order to make the best suc- 
cess of it in your power; have the right thing to 
impart to those who need; know as perfectly as 
possible what their needs are, both specific and 
general. Remember what James tells us, in chap- 
ter three of his epistle, about the evils as well as 
the value of the tongue as the instrument for ex- 
pression and impartation. Also recall the words 
of Longfellow in his little poem about ‘“ The 


[ 141 ] 


You and Your Church 





Arrow and the Song.” He shot an arrow into 
the air and years afterward found it unbroken 
in the heart of an oak, while the song, from 
beginning to end, he found again in the heart of 
a friend. Remember.that, when you speak, what 
God approves is his own word, and that word 
cannot return to him void. (Isa. 55: 11.) There 
is scarcely a blessing that cannot be floated to 
another on the current of consecrated conversa- 
tion, and when you see what your appeal and 
instruction and warning can do in restraining 
and educating and comforting and ennobling peo- 
ple, you will surely want to train every power 
of expression to its highest and use it to the ut- 
most. But back of the organs of speech is some- 
thing else. It is the power of 


2. Thought 


I said the organs of speech express what you | 
think about. So you serve with thought-power. 
That is a source on which the speech draws. A 
tongue cannot run without something behind it. 
Unless you use your thought-power well, your 
tongue will lack certain important things to say 
that it ought to have at command. Think 
through your tasks, your great body of truths, 
think of your associates, your fellow men for 
whom you are to work. Train your judgments 
to work through your tongue. 

Here are three duties: to use your powers of 
thought; to train them, both by use and by ser- 
vice; to understand all the tasks assigned to you. 


[ 142 | 


Powers With Which You Work 


Know all the mission fields and as many names 
of the missionaries as you can, know the theory 
and history of modern missions. Know the prin- 
ciples of religious education, which are employed, 
or ought to be employed, in the Sunday school 
and in all the departments of church education. 
Know the body of truths that are vital and foun- 
dational in the teachings of Christianity. The 
intellect cannot be neglected by the Christian 
worker. In truth, as a teacher, you have the best 
opportunity to become really cultured that is 
possessed by anybody, other things being equal, 
when you consider your associates, your text- 
books, and the great truths involved. 


3. Heart-power 


John the Baptist said he was only a voice; but 
voice is the instrument of mind and heart and 
of every other power of the man. You put heart 
into the work, for the tongue expresses what is in 
the heart, and it must be worthy to be expressed. 

First of all, you must control the production 
of feeling, both the character and volume of it, 
a very simple thing. You cannot command the 
proper feelings to come up from the depths of the 
soul in their suitable amounts; but you can feed 
the soul properly, and the right feelings will come 
by growth. You maintain a censorship over the 
heart. Read what Jesus says in Matthew 15 : 
18-20 about the output of the evil heart. 

Secondly, you must direct the current of the 
heart’s output upon the work you are to do, 


| 143 | 


You and Your Church 


direct it through the proper channel of expres- 
sion. ‘That will energize your ideas and words 
and make your words welcome and effective. 


4. Conscience 


Conscience is the power within you that ap- 
proves or disapproves of what you do. It must 
be ever active, but it must be instructed by the 
word of God and sensitized by the Spirit of God 
who dwells within you. There is nothing at all 
that you can ever do which the conscience ‘will not 
approve or disapprove. As a driving-power, it 
makes any duty possible and agreeable. 


5. Will-power 


The thing that distinguishes man from the 
brute is personality, and the most distinctive thing 
about personality is the will. ‘There is nothing 
that is impossible with God, and there is scarcely 
anything that God will not do for and through 
the one who uses his will in the service of God. 
The conversion of a soul is really the surrender 
of the will to do God’s will and, instead of weak- 
ening it, that surrender brings into the soul the 
power of God’s will. The art of willing is a cen- 
tral art and a well-instructed and persistent will 
is a great treasure in the work you are called to 
do. It will take you through all opposing ob- 
stacles and keep you ever at it. Every form of 
distraction will be in your way, and a holy pur- 
pose is the only thing that will keep you from 
falling or turning aside. 


[144] 


Powers With Which You Work 


6. Social Power 


Consecrate to the cause of your church your 
talent for friendship and social enjoyment and 
your talent for gratifying the social needs of 
others. If your social standing is command- 
ing, that is a gift of God to be used for your 
people. It belongs to humanity. The church 
needs it. 


7. Executive Power 


Whatever executive power you have is sorely 
needed, nothing else is more needed. It is re- 
quired in teaching your class and in handling 
them for the high ends you aim at, as a sort of 
army, or regiment in the church army. You will 
need it in leading the young people, or the mis- 
sion circle, or the committee of which you are 
chairman. If you are not gifted with executive 
ability, then appreciate it in others, and be a 
good follower of the leader in whose group you 
belong. 


8. Looks 


The countenance, the bearing, as well as the 
tones of voice, are a means of working. They 
add to or subtract from what you do. Looks 
and facial expression alone, without words or 
deeds, have a vital power. You may do a thing 
with a look that will render the deed impotent; 
you may say a thing in a tone of voice that will 
deny what you say. 


| 145 ] 


You and Your Church 


9. Hands 


Yours must be a head, hand, and heart religion. 
Jesus said, “ Why call ye me Lord, Lord, and do 
not the things that I say?”’ Read the second 
chapter of James and hear what he says about 
professing great things while doing nothing. 
Then turn to 1 John 3 : 7 and read what is said 
about it. There is enough to keep many hands 
busy, and you must have a part in all the well- 
doing that is going on in the church, in the com- 
munity, in the world. Hand religion really in- 
cludes foot religion, includes all active service. 


10. Money 


Your money is an instrument of service, and a 
great big instrument it is. John Wesley had the 
right of it when he said that every man ought 
to make as much as possible, save as much as | 
possible, give as much as possible. Here are 
some facts about your money that will help you 
to know its meaning in your Christian life: 

(1) It all belongs to God, because you belong 
to him by creation and by your choice of Christ 
as Saviour whereby you are his by recreation in 
Christ; because the raw material of wealth was 
put into the ground for you; because you have 
been especially blessed by him in your use of those 
materials; because that which makes it all valu- 
able is due to the civilization which his providence 
has developed; because all your powers with 
which you have gained it are the gift of God and, 


[ 146 ] 


Powers With Which You Work 


as he owns you and the powers with which you 
work, and the material on which you work, you 
can never have anything at all which you can 
own absolutely. 

(2) It can all be used for the good of man, 
even the part you hold back for your own sup- 
port and the part you use in continuing your busi- 
ness. You can make money in such a way as to 
be doing good with every cent of it, whether you 
are an employer or an employee. 

(3) You can turn that money into character, 
your own character, in the way you make it and 
in the way you use it after it is made; into the 
characters of those on whom you use it, both 
while making it and afterward. 

(4) It is the ripened fruit of your own powers 
at work and can be made to represent you in the 
church and in the mission field. 

(5) God wants you to recognize his owner- 
ship over it and over you by having a definite 
part of it put into his definite work. ‘The part 
that seems right is one-tenth. Write to “ Lay- 
man ” of Chicago for literature giving a complete 
treatment of the tithing principle. 

This is the point: your money is an instrument 
of service, a powerful, convincing, effective in- 
strument. Learn its nature, its value, and the 
art of using it. 


11. Relationships 


Your relationships in the home, in the church, 
and in the community are all endowments of 


[ 147 ] 


You and Your Church 


power. You begin your work with those with 
whom you are connected in these ways. The 
ties that bind are the trails along which influence 
goes and efforts are made for the good of those 
with whom you are connected in those ways. 


12. Personality 


That is your own self, that entity in which 
are centered all those powers of which I have 
been speaking. You yourself are the important 
factor in your work. Emerson said, ‘‘ What you 
are sounds so loud I cannot hear what you say.” 
You are behind the words you say, the deeds you 
do, and you impart the subtle power of yourself 
to them. The nurture and the use of that self 
which uses all those powers is the paramount 
concern. Be what you should be, and you will 
almost surely say what you should say and do 
what you should do. The how of it is expressed | 
in the words of the evangelistic song which says, 
“Tl be what you want me to be, dear Lord.” 
Self-making and self-mastering are not easy, but 
there is a very definite way of doing it. 

We always take account of personal influence. 
You have it. Make it as big a thing as possible. 
Look again through all those several powers of 
which I have spoken, and be sure of three things: 
That you use each power thoroughly and pur- 
posely; that you use them in true harmony and 
balance, each supporting the other; that all the 
time you develop them for still greater use- 
fulness. 


[ 148 ] 


Powers With Which You Work 


All of these powers head up in your personal- 
ity, and they constitute your opportunity, or fit 
you to meet your opportunities. 

Remember also these two facts: 

First, that you can never be happy unless you 
follow this course. All who work with all their 
powers are happy. Not one is grouchy and dis- 
agreeable. ‘here are workers who are grouchy, 
and some of them are quite useful; but they do 
not work with all their powers, and they are not 
nearly so useful as they could be. If you are not 
useful in the whole range of your talents and 
powers you will be uncomfortable within yourself 
and in your association with others. 
Secondly, that your work will not be in vain, 

cannot be in vain. Listen to Paul: ‘‘ Wherefore, 
my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmovable, 
always abounding in the work of the Lord, foras- 
much as ye know that your labor is not in vain 
Wetoe Word = (Gt Cor, 315 2458): As. he jalso 
wrote to a young minister, so he says to you, 
“Take heed unto thyself’ (1 Tim. 4 : 16). 


[ 149 ] © 


Tit 


THE POWER FROM ABOVE 


You accomplish your work in the making of 
character, your own and that of others, by the 
use of the powers with which God has endowed 
you by nature and by grace, but those powers are 
unequal to the stupendous achievement. You 
have to secure an added power that will vitalize 
and energize and fertilize them. There is an 
element in the perfected human character which 
no unaided human powers are competent to place 
there or to develop it after it has been placed 
there. 


1. That Power Has Its Source in God the Father 


That is true because all power came originally 
from him. We may distinguish four different 
kinds of power. One is physical. We appreciate 
that; we need it; it is the instrument of great 
deeds. Another is psychical, something that re- 
sides in the spirit and shows itself in thought and 
emotion and all. the other ways in which your 
spirit exhibits itself. Those powers are necessary 
in God’s service. A third power is that of the 
personality, and we know how important that is. 
A fourth power comes directly from God into 
the heart which reverences and trusts and obeys 


[ 150 ] 


The Power from Above 


him. That is the power I am talking about just 
now. 

You must have that in a personal way. Paul 
tells the Philippians, ‘‘ work out your own salva- 
tion,’ because it has already been worked, and it 
is God “ who worketh in you both to will and to 
work, for his good pleasure” (Phil. 2 : 12, 13). 
He did this for his pleasure, and they were to do 
it for the same reason. All your worth comes 
from that source, and all your work is made pos- 
sible by power from him. Whatever you are try- 
ing to do will fail at some vital point, even 
though you make use of all your noblest powers, 
unless you get something from God which is 
missing in your natural make-up and is required 
in the product you are trying to turn out. “ My 
God shall supply every need of yours” (Phil. 
A: 19). “We are God's fellow workers’’ 


Gu ore2210); 


2. It is Made Possible to Us Through Jesus Our 
Saviour 


It is brought to us by him. Here are several 
things he does: First, he reveals God to you and 
to those whom you are helping to find him and 
work for him. To reveal means to uncover. 
You see God in him. Secondly, he brings you 
and God together in peace by making an atone- 
ment for your sins and making you love God. 
Thirdly, he makes you a coworker with God. 
Do you try to bring some one to God? He says, 
“No man cometh unto the Father, but by me” 


[151] 


You and Your Church 


(John 14: 6). Do you wish to know the Father © 
and to teach men what he is? ‘‘ No man know- 
eth the Father, save the Son and he to whomso- 
ever the Son willeth to reveal him.” 

In all this work of making yourself a good 
Christian and helping others to do the same, you 
are getting power from the Father through the 
Son. That is what he did in himself, what he 
did and is doing in you, what he tells you to do, 
shows you how to do, secures for you the power 
to do; as Paul said, “I can do all things through 
Christ who strengtheneth me.” He gives you the 
motive: ‘‘ The love of Christ constraineth us.” 
You have a vital connection with God by Christ’s 
life, as John said, “‘ In him was life, and the life 
was the light of men”’ (John 1: 4). Paul says, 
“Tt is no longer I, but Christ that liveth in me, 
and that life which I now live in the flesh, I live 
by faith which is in the Son of God, who loved 
me and gave himself up for me” (Gal. 2 : 20). 
Know Christ, and you will know God. Keep in 
touch with him, and the sacred current will flow 
into your life. 


3. Christ is Mediated to You by the Holy Spirit 


In the same way you will bring others to 
Christ and strengthen them in Christ. 

When Jesus was leaving he said, “ Ye shall 
receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come 
upon you.” 

(1) It is that Spirit who will awaken those 
whom you desire to bring to Christ, to a sense of 


[ 152] 


The Power from Above 


their need. Jesus told in advance that when the 
Spirit came, he would convict the world of its 
needs. (John 16 : 8-11.) 

(2) It is the Spirit who will teach you the 
meaning of truth and its use. (John 16 : 12-15.) 

(3) He helps our infirmities in several ways, 
as Paul tells the Romans (Rom. 8 : 26) ; he leads 
us (Rom. 8 : 14), becomes the consciousness of 
our childship to the Father (Rom. 8: 15-17), 
guides and empowers us to pray (Rom. 8 : 26, 
27), enables us to know that all things work to- 
gether for our good. (Rom, 8 : 28.) 

(4) He is the author of the whole Christian 
character, its graces being his fruits. (Gal. 5 : 
22-24.) 

The Spirit does his work with you and through 
you, but works from within you. Jesus said he 
would send the Spirit, and then called him by 
the name Paraklete in Greek, which means “ one 
called to the side of another to help.” The Spirit 
was called to our side by our needs, called to take 
the place of the departing Christ, but he does 
not stay at our side: he takes his place within, 
and from that point of vantage does the many 
things | have spoken of and many others. “ He 
shall be in you,” said Jesus. ‘ Know ye not that 
ye are the temple of the Holy Spirit, and that 
the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?” asks Paul in 
First Corinthians 3 : 16. 

The Spirit directed Philip to the Ethiopian 
and caught him away after that work was done. 
(Acts 8 : 29-40.) So he will help you in your 


[ 153 ] 


You and Your Church 


work. You need his power and wisdom and 
love. Seek him. Depend on him. Yield to him. 
He is always within you, even when you are 
dull and indifferent and self-willed ; always there, 
but often grieved (Eph. 4 : 30), his power often 
quenched (1 Thess. 5 : 19), but always at work 
in you, and always seeking to work through you. 


[ 154 ] 


IV 


HOW TO GET THAT POWER 


1. Listening to God 


There are three ways of doing that: in re- 
ceiving what Jesus says to you; in responding 
to the Spirit’s promptings within you; in getting 
the teachings of the Bible. I am speaking espe- 
cially of the latter, though that includes what 
Jesus says to you as well as what it says about 
him and about God and about you. 

The Bible is the story of the revelation of God 
in Christ, beginning with the creation of the race, 
its sin, and the promise of a Redeemer, tracing 
the history of the arrangements God made in get- 
ting the world ready for Christ, then giving an 
authentic and authoritative account of his life 
and his teachings and his plans. 

Your success in being a Christian in yourself 
and a good “ Christian among Christians ’”’ will 
be in exact proportion to your success in learning 
the Bible and making use of it. No other book 
can take its place, for it is the only book that has 
what you are compelled to have in your blessed 
business. Here are some of the considera- 
tions: 

(1) It is the only book that tells the story of 
Jesus, your only Saviour and Teacher and King. 


[155 ] 


You and Your Church 


(2) It tells that story accurately, adequately, 
authoritatively, for it tells it in human language, 
out of human experience, and makes an ex- 
hibit of all divine resources to meet all human 
needs. | 

(3) It is the source-book of all the other books 
that are worth while, the source of their ideas, or 
characters, or style, or morals. | 

(4) It is the source-book of all the great char- 
acters since that time. 

(5) It is the source-book of the great laws 
that are operative in the world, for the laws of 
America and Canada are based on the English 
Common Law, the English law on the Code of 
Justinian, and Justinian on Moses, while the 
teachings and spirit of Jesus have softened it all 
for us. 

(6) It is the source-book of our civilization, 
the only civilization that has not been self-de- 
structive, a civilization that can endure only by 
being controlled by this book. 

(7) It is essential to a healthy, happy, and 
victorious life. It has been compared to light, 
for it leads you to the fountain of light, which is 
Jesus. It has been compared to food, “ sweeter 
also than honey and the honey-comb.” It has 
been compared to the sword, “the sword of the 
spirit” CE phi G37; Hebias iro eres 

(8) It is the only book in which you can find 
original information on certain vital matters. 
One of those matters is the origin of the world 
and of the race. Here is the account of it which 


[ 156 ] 


How to Get That Power 


science is seeking. Another matter is that of 
the origin of sin. Still another is the fact of 
immortality. There are a good many reasons 
why we believe we shall live on after the experi- 
ence of death, but the Bible is at hand with defi- 
nite and satisfying information. There is the 
matter of the resurrection. Nature has hints, but 
no proof of it. Some lofty souls have dreamed 
of such a destiny for soul and body, but the Bible 
tells about it and tells it in a way to satisfy every 
normal question of the human mind. 

Yes, your success in being a good Christian will 
be in the degree in which you make a conquest 
of the Bible as “the man of your counsel,” the 
guide of your life. And it will enable you to do 
that for the simple reason that it will connect 
you up with the source of the power which you 
must have, the power that originates in God the 
Father, flows out to us through Jesus, and is 
vitalized in the soul by the Holy Spirit, the One 
who quickened us when we were “ dead in tres- 
passes and in sin”’ (Eph. 2: 1). 

Here are four things it will give you: (a) 
Knowledge, which is the more immediate and ob- 
jective result of reading and studying it. (b) In- 
sight, for it is “living, and active, and sharper 
than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to 
the dividing of soul and spirit, of both joints 
and marrow, and quick to discern the thoughts 
and intents of the heart. And there is no creature 
that is not manifest in his sight; but all things 
are naked and laid open before the eyes of him 


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You and Your Church 





with whom we have to do” (Heb. 4: 12, 13). 
(c) Devotion. That means inspiration and energy 
and enthusiasm and never-wearying fidelity. (d) 
Skill, that is, tact. J actus is the Latin word for 
touch. You havea sense of physical touch which 
does two things for you. It discloses what a 
given substance is—even though your eyes be 
shut—and it suggests how you are to deal with 
it. You touch a rose or a piece of iron with 
closed eyes, and that sense of touch will do those 
two things for you. You will never try to handle 
the iron as if it were a rose. So your spirit 
touches people, and that sense of touch serves 
you in those two ways. You handle each person 
in a different way, and Jesus gives you that touch 
through the blessed book. That skill implies love 
and sympathy and patience—the Bible disciplines 
you in that manifold grace. You learn to know 
what you need and what others need; you learn. 
how to apply the teachings of the Bible to that 
need. The one who learns that art becomes the 
most useful person in the community. You will 
never know what your work is or how to do it or 
have the power or even the inclination to do it 
unless you know the word. 

There are six encouragements right here. One 
is that the Bible is the most knowable book there 
is. ‘The most learned person in all the world 
will find something new in the Bible every time 
he goes over the pages he has been reading since 
childhood, and the most ignorant person in the 
whole community will find something he can take 


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How to Get That Power 


hold of and live by. Another is that one bit of 
knowledge always leads to more. And another is 
that it grows more and more fascinating as you 
learn it; its yoke is easy; its burden, light. 
Again, it has something for you, whatever the 
crying needs of your own life or the needs of 
those you serve as a Christian. Fifthly, it dis- 
closes its truths in the degree in which you yield 
yourself to its sway. Jesus said that when he told 
the people, “ If any man willeth to do his will [of 
my Father who is in heaven], he shall know of 
the teaching’ (John 7: 17). You learn by do- 
ing. That’s true in all learning, and especially 
true here. Sixthly, if you will apply the word 
faithfully to yourself, you will be able to apply it 
helpfully to others. It is trustworthy. Commit 
yourself. to it. 

The question of how to possess yourself of the 
Bible and its wonderful teachings is a practical 
one. You need, first, equipment. That means 
a well-printed copy, preferably in the American 
Revised edition, with maps, a Bible dictionary, 
and index, all in the same cover, or in separate 
volumes. One book may contain most of this. 
Next, you need a method of using it. That 
method will contain a time element, so that you 
will be regular in your study. It will involve an 
objective, meeting special needs in yourself and 
in others. Method is essential. You will have 
to create the method best adapted to your own 
case, using those two elements of time and an 
objective. 


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You and Your Church 


2. Talking to God 


By that I mean prayer. Reading the Scrip- 
tures—listening to God—and prayer—talking to 
God—will put you in such contact with the 
source of power that you will never lack any- 
thing. 

You have to pray anyhow, because you are a 
child of God and you cannot help talking to your 
Father. Prayer is the very breath of the new 
life in Christ. You would be utterly abnormal 
if you did not want to speak to your Father. 
No normal child wants to keep always utterly 
dumb before its father. 

God wants you to talk to him, else he would 
be an unnatural Father. He enjoys having you 
talk to him. Of course he does. He wants to 
do many things for you which he would be utterly 
unable to do if you did not pray. You also, as a. 
Christian, desire to be what it is impossible for 
you to become without prayer, and you want to 
do many things which you cannot do unless you 
pray. 

So you see that your vigor, your enjoyment, 
your growth, your success in work all require that 
you pray. 

(1) What is Prayer? 

When I say prayer I mean one or all of four 
things. 

a. Prayer means association with God, fellow- 
ship with him, being conscious of his controlling, 
if not always comfortable, presence. We may 


[ 160 ] 


How to Get That Power 


say simply communion with God, whatever you 
may or may not ask of him or say to him. You 
associate with him because of fellowship with 
him; that fellowship with him is due to the rela- 
tionships that exist between you two. He made 
man in his image, and that broken image is re- 
stored by Christ. You are reborn into his family. 
You are akin to him. There is something like 
him in you. The restoration of that old likeness 
was begun when you were reborn into the image 
of his sinless and eternal Son, Jesus, your Sa- 
viour and Elder Brother, the typical member of 
the family. It is being perfected as you grow like 
Christ. That kinship draws you to God and you 
enjoy being with him. He wants that form of 
prayer which we call “conscious communion ” 
with him, to be habitual. Perhaps that is what 
Paul meant when he said, “ Pray without ceas- 
ing’ (1 Thess. 5 : 17)—be ever in an attitude 
of such fellowship with the Father that it would 
be entirely easy to utter your supplication any 
minute—be always in the spirit of prayer. God 
wants you to be aware of him every minute, 
conscious of his presence, for he is actually 
always with you. Then why not be aware of 
that presence? 

b. Prayer means the utterance of your praise 
and thanks for what he has done for you and 
for what he is, and always has been, to you. He 
has already done so much more than you could 
ever ask him for, that the volume of your praise 
should be larger than the volume of your peti- 


[161 ] 


You and Your Church 


tions. It is hard for you to have the fellow- 
ship with him without spending most of your 
thought on being grateful. You will be thank- 
ing him most of the time. The word “thank” 
and the word “think”’ are the same except for 
one letter. They are actually from the same root 
word, and the meaning is that the normal process 
of thinking is one of thanking God for what he 
has done and for what he is. The words “ praise” 
and appraise vand prize ands) price mage 
‘“precious’’ have a common origin. You ap- 
praise God’s value in praising him, tell how pre- 
cious he is, show how you prize him, set a super- 
lative price on him. The word “ worship” is a 
contraction of the word “ worthship.”” In your 
worship you declare God’s worth in so far as a 
human being can declare the infinite. 

c. Prayer 1s petition for what you need, or 
think you need: for wisdom (James I : 5-8); 
for forgiveness'(1 John’ 1°: 9; Isa. 55 2-7) ston 
strength for your work and every needed blessing 
(Ps. 37: 4). You will need to ask many things 
for yourself. (1 John 5 : 14,15.) The teachings 
of the Scriptures on the subject are full and 
stimulating. Search out its teachings for your- 
self. 

d. Prayer will often be intercession. That 
word “ intercession’? means walking between. 
You are farther along, at least in some things, 
than a certain other person, walking on ahead of 
him. Then walk in between that person and 
God and get something from God for him that he 


[ 162] 


How to Get That Power 


may not know how to get for himself or may 
need, over and above what he himself is able to 
get. He will need, at the least, the love which 
you put into your petition for him. ‘There is a 
social value in praying for others. We are tied 
up in the bundle of life with others, and we must 
make their interest our own when we pray. 

You will be able to get strength and wisdom 
for some of your tasks only through prayer, and 
you will be able to secure blessings for others 
through prayer, blessings that they will go with- 
out all their lives unless you pray for them. 

Read the farewell interview of Samuel with 
the people as he turned them over to the king 
whom they were determined to have. When, in 
- emotional contrition, they asked him to pray for 
them, his response was one of the noblest words 
ever uttered: “ Far be it from me that I should 
sin against Jehovah in ceasing to pray for you”’ 
(1 Sam. 12: 23). Especially do I recommend 
the team-work praying which Jesus invites us to 
do in Matthew 18: 19: “If two of you shall 
agree on earth as touching anything that they 
shall ask, it shall be done for them by my Father 
who is in heaven.”’ And I ask if you do not 
think you sin against any one who needs your 
prayers, when you fail, or cease, to pray for that 
one. If you can secure vitally needed blessings 
through prayer, it is your sin not to pray; if 
you can meet some urgent need of others by 
praying for them, surely you will not do so 
wrong a thing as not to pray. 


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You and Your Church 


(2) Some Suggestions About How to Pray. 

a. You are to pray with every power of body 
and soul, with every power you have. 

b. Your praying should take account of every 
interest of yours, for God is interested in every- 
thing that is of interest or importance to you. 
Cultivate the habit of talking to God about every- 
thing and leaving with him what sort of an- 
swer to give, yes or no, and, if yes, what it 
shall be, when he will give it, and how he will 
do it. 

c. Let your praying take account of everything 
of importance to others. You should spend more 
time in talking to God about others than about 
your own personal interests, for there are so 
many more of them. 

d. Let your praying take account of all of God, 
not of his love alone, but of his power; not of his 
power alone, but of his perfect knowledge, for. 
he knows all things; not of his knowledge alone, 
but of his wisdom, for he knows exactly what is 
best; not of his wisdom alone, but of his omni- 
presence as well, for he can deliver the answer to 
your prayers over in China as well as in your 
home; not of his omnipotence alone, but of his 
tender interest in you. 

e. Let your praying take account of all God's 
interests. He is interested in many people and in 
many different kinds of enterprises. He stored 
the physical world with many treasures, and he 
is interested in seeing us discover and use them. 
He is at work among the stars, and you can study 


[ 164 ] 


How to Get That Power 


them in that light, rejoicing in the fact that they 
belong to your Father and that he 1s engaged in 
stupendous enterprises. His is the vast enterprise 
of missions over the world. 

f. Let the praying be constant, “ without ceas- 
ing.’ That means two things, that you are al- 
ways in the attitude of prayer and that, when you 
have undertaken a prayer enterprise, you keep it 
up till the answer comes, even if it takes a 
half century. Pray it through, talk it out with 
God. 

(3) As to the Method, or Habit, of Prayer. 

a. Make the resolution, and keep it active in 
the mind, that you will get all out of praying 
that can be gotten out of it, that you will secure 
whatever God can do for you and for your work 
in behalf of others. 

b. Make a special study of all the teachings 
of the Bible about praying. You might spend 
a season on that subject. Then about once a 
year study the subject afresh. 

c. Read the stories of the prayer-life of emi- 
nent servants of God and, in the reading of biog- 
raphy, note the illustrations of the power of 
prayer in men’s lives. Take the cases of Moody, 
Gen. Chinese Gordon, and General Havelock as 
instances. 

d. Have regular times for prayer in which you 
can be absolutely alone. Jesus was wise in say- 
ing, “ Shut the door” when you enter your closet 
for your private, personal prayer. The reason 
is that, if you are aware of the fact that your 


[ 165 ] 


You and Your Church 


door is unlocked, you will have the consciousness 
that you might be interrupted at any minute and, 
therefore, your mind will be divided, you cannot 
concentrate your thoughts in prayer. It is strictly 
necessary to be alone with God at times, even 
at regular times. Moses was alone with God 
when the call and the glory came to him at the 
burning bush. Jacob was alone with God when 
he had that vision which ultimately changed his 
life. Isaiah and God were shut up together when 
the prophet saw himself and humanity and God 
in a new light. Paul was caught up into the 
third heaven, and he and God seemed to be the 
only ones in existence. John on the Island of 
Patmos saw that panorama of apocalyptic glory 
when no one was near but God. You must be 
alone with God, in the consciousness that you are 
face to face with him. 

e. Have special seasons of prayer. Appoint a 
day of worship for yourself. Take a holiday for 
prayer and take your prayer-list with you. Re- 
member the whole church, the officers, the vari- 
ous groups, the missionaries, the general workers 
of the denomination and of all Christian bodies, 
the rulers of the land, the interests of the com- 
munity. (Matt. 5 : 44; Eph. 6 : 18-20; 1 Tim. 
2: 1-3.) Keep a list of the unconverted of the 
congregation and those belonging to the families 
of the church. Have the names and needs of 
the afflicted ever in your mind. Let your praying 
be concrete, specific, personal. Take heed to your 
prayer-life. Talk much with God. 


[ 166 ] 


How to Get That Power 


3. Working with God 


This is a third way of securing the power you 
must get from God—working with him. Of 
course, if you do anything at all that is right, you 
work with God, because you work with the mate- 
rial which he has created and placed in the soil, 
or under the soil, or in the air, or in the sun 
and moon and stars; or you utilize the laws which 
he has made, like the law of cause and effect, the 
law of gravity, the law of the seasons, etc.; or 
you use those powers of your own which are his 
gift, the powers of body and mind and personal- 
ity; or you work with other human beings who 
are made by him. 

You work much with him unconsciously. But 
if you should do all that I have been speaking 
of consciously, aware of the Source of all, de- 
lighting in your Colaborer, it would take on a 
new interest and value to you and its effect on 
others would be greater. But there are things 
that you cannot do at all unless you work with 
him consciously. You accomplish things you 
would never think of undertaking at all except 
that you know he and you are working at that 
task—bringing people to their Saviour, comfort- 
ing the troubled, discipling the souls of people, 
and perfecting them in Christ. You take his Son 
into your life. His Spirit transforms you. His 
word enlightens you as you seek to do his will. 
The common work he and you do establishes 
contacts between you. You respond to him and 


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You and Your Church 


receive his power. You obey him and get the 
shock of his will. You associate with him in 
work, and that brings you the power ee his 
thought and heart. 


Some Suggestions 


1. Make every task you do, even the most 
material, a conscious participation with him im 
some purpose of Mis, as Paul says, ‘ Whether, 
therefore, ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, 
do all to the glory of God.” There is nothing 
on earth you may do in any calling that is not a 
work of partnership with God. Make that fact a 
part of your consciousness and enjoy it to the 
full. 

2. As he does nothing without calling us into 
partnership with him, get as deep into lis work 
as he will allow you to go. It is simply glorious. 
“We are laborers together with God” in every- 
thing that he does for men. Working with his 
wisdom and love and strength you become en- 
dowed with them. 


[168 


V 


SOME THINGS THAT HELP 


1. The Church 


There is first of all the help that comes from 
the church asa whole. That body of people with 
their enterprises and virtues reenforces you at 
every point. The consciousness of being a part 
of it, a vital part at that, exhilarates, warms, in- 
tensifies, guides you. It is as if you were the 
inlet of a great ocean whose tides sweep through 

you. 

Here are three things you must by all means 
do, with conscience and high purpose and the 
greatest possible intelligence: 

(1) Attend the meetings of the church—all of 
them. If there is one of them that you must 
neglect, let it be the one that can most easily 
spare you. But do not select one for neglect, un- 
less it is simply imperative. There are all sorts 
of reasons, given by a great many different men, 
for attending church, from men like Roosevelt, 
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Gladstone, and—well, 
the list is too long to try to give. 

You can see some of those reasons instantly 
and can feel them all as soon as they are men- 
tioned. They appeal to your reason, to your 
heart’s love, to your higher self-interest, to your 


[ 169 | 


You and Your Church 


fidelity, to your patriotism, to your community 
interest, to your ambition to become the best 
person you can, to your honor, to your comrade- 
ship with your fellow Christians. 

You get truths that you need. 

You get fervor and motive for your tasks. 

You get pleasure that you cannot get anywhere 
else. : 

You get protection against your perils, seen 
and unseen. 

You get the love of people. 

You get the help of people. 

You get opportunities for work. 

You find your work. 

But, as much as you get, you give still more, 
and that is the better thing of the two. 

You give cheer to those who are there. 

You cheer the preacher. 

You find some one, now and then, who would 
have been desolate all his life, but for what you 
said or offered him there. 

You give your church a rating in the com- 
munity by attending. 

You prove to all that there is such a thing as 
fidelity, and that is needed in the community. 

You help some one else to find his work. 

You not only escape that miserable feeling that 
you have not been square with the people with 
whom you have a standing engagement to go to 
church, but you encourage all the other members 
to be square and you help. When you go, sit with 
members of your own family. If there are chil- 


[ 170 ] 


Some Things That Help 


dren with you, keep them in the pew with you, for 
there is the greatest sort of need of teaching them 
to worship together both as a family and as part 
of the group which constitutes the church. If 
the younger members of the family seat them- 
selves in church according to their caprices or 
their changing comradeships, they fail to grow 
into the right habits of social worship and private 
worship. You cannot pray alone unless you 
sometimes pray with others, nor can you pray 
well in a social meeting unless you can pray 
alone. There is a multitudinous element in us 
that requires that we meet in the congregation 
with others of like mind, and there the younger 
_ members of the family must learn reverence and 
the expression of it. 

(2) Not only attend the church, but support 
it, support it with an intelligent and true con- 
science, with system and with good cheer, giving, 
as it may need your support, according to your 
ability. The support of the church is investing 
rather than giving; it is a way of securing to 
_ yourself and to your kindred the greatest of all 
values. In another chapter I have spoken of the 
moral value and the right use of money. 

(3) Bear your own personal part in the wor- 
ship at the meetings of the church. Sing in the 
choir if you have that sort of talent. Teach or 
act as an officer in the Sunday school, if you are 
fitted for it and are asked to do so. Lead in 
prayer or even lead a meeting when it is suitable. 
Fit yourself for any or all of these duties. 


[171 ] 


You and Your Church 


The midweek meeting for prayer has been 
rightly called the thermometer of the church. 
You cannot be so gifted by nature or so developed 
in your Christian character that you will not 
need the help you can gain at the prayer-meeting. 
You can never live among a people who will be 
so perfect as not to need the help that you can 
give them by going to the prayer-meeting. There 
you try out the promises of God; you learn the 
deepest lessons of all; you find the deepest needs 
disclosed ; you come into touch with people whom 
you can help in special ways—burdened, anxious, 
discouraged, undisciplined, willing, helpful peo- 
ple. Your own needs will disclose themselves at 
the prayer-meeting as at no other meeting, and 
you will find help coming to you. 


2. The Denomination 


You get help from the whole body of the 
church through your consciousness of being a 
vital part of it; but you must cultivate the deep 
consciousness of being a part of the great denom- 
ination which has achieved such a glorious task 
and is now engaged in such glorious world-wide 
enterprises. “‘I am a part of that body,’ you 
say to yourself, and you feel glad and grateful 
and hopeful and purposeful. 

Inform yourself about all the doings of the 
denomination, its enterprises and problems. Do 
that by reading the denominational papers, by 
becoming acquainted with just as many of the 
general and local leaders as you can, and by at- 


[172] 


Some Things That Help 


tending the larger meetings. Be sure to attend 
the annual sessions of the Association to which 
your church belongs. Go to the State or Province 
meeting as often as possible. Make it a point to 
attend the general convention. 


3. Friends 


You get special help from your more intimate, 
personal friends. Some of them are in your home 
church. They encourage you by their example. 
They help you to see the things you have in com- 
mon. That enriches you. They join with you 
in your common tasks, pass through campaigns 
with you for the extension of Christ’s kingdom, 
and contribute to your own development. You 
work and plan and purpose and pray and worship 
and war together till you become almost essential 
to each other’s happiness. I have seen old com- 
rades in the war for righteousness, who could 
scarcely endure a day when they did not see 
each other. One of the most beautiful sights in 
the church is that of such friendships. And they 
are common. 

Find friends in the church. They will illus- 
trate life for you. They will do team-work with 
you. They will give you an opportunity to serve 
them. They will show you how not todo. They 
will adorn and honor you. 


4. Literature 


(1) The fugitive literature, periodicals. There 
are at least three papers you should read every 


[ 173 ] 


You and Your Church 


week. One is the denominational paper which 
covers your territory. That will keep you in- 
formed on what the denomination is doing. It 
is the best assistant pastor any church can have. 
If the paper costs you two dollars and fifty cents 
a year, that is only five cents a week. If you 
really cannot afford it, then go in with some one 
else or several others and take it in partnership. 
It would be difficult properly to value the work 
done by those papers for the denomination and 
for the general cause of Christ. Another is the 
mission paper. Still another is the Sunday school 
paper which not only gives expositions of the les- 
sons, week by week, but discusses methods of 
work in detail and guides you in your study and 
in Sunday school work. The daily paper may be 
read in a distinctly Christian way with important 
results in your thought and usefulness. 

(2) The more permanent literature, books. It- 
is literally true that “of the making of books 
there is no end.” You can get many of the books 
of a general character at the public library. I 
would often buy a good book of permanent value 
to you as a Christian and as a church-member, a 
book on the Bible, a book on some phase of the 
Sunday school enterprise, a book on missions, a 
book of biography, the life of some great man 
or woman who has wrought for God and human- 
ity. Accumulate a worker’s library. There are 
so many books on all these subjects that a wise 
selection is not difficult to make. Look over the 
list at the bookstore. Confer with your pastor. 


[ 174 ] 


Some Things That Help 





Read the reviews in the papers. Consult with 
some expert. There is always one book that is 
the best of all. Get that one. Get the best one on 
each line of study. Another suggestion: Borrow 
books and read them, but be sure to return them. 
Still another suggestion: Lend them as fast as 
you get them read, and keep them going. 


5. The Sabbath 


The Sabbath is God’s answer to a fundamental 
need of all men of every nation for one day in 
seven for rest and opportunity to nurture the 
higher life and to render the higher service to 
each other. Jesus endorsed and restored it after 
it had been terribly misused and also suffered 
from disuse. ‘The civil Sabbath is on the same 
day and is necessary. The law of rest for all is 
necessary in order to have a day of rest for each 
one. You must rest that day from habitual toil 
unless your toil is some work of mercy or of 
necessity as provided for by God and by the laws 
of the land. And you must use the day as one 
of rare opportunity. There are two shameless 
abuses of the day, one from the pursuit of money- 
getting and the other from the pursuit of plea- 
sure. All sorts of perils threaten the very exis- 
tence of the day. When it goes, homes will go, 
governments will go, unselfishness will pass away 
from the world. The Sabbath is an instrument 
with which you work. Keep it sacredly. Use it 
for the highest purposes of worship and religious 
ministry. 


[175 ] 


VI 
DIFFICULTIES AND ENCOURAGEMENTS 


Of course, there are difficulties in the way of 
your complete success. Your work would not be 
interesting or worth while if it was easy. 


1. Difficulties 


There are three classes of difficulties: Some 
you find within yourself. You have limitations, 
and you are keenly aware of them; in truth, the 
uncomfortable fact is that you seem to become 
more keenly aware of them all the time: limita- 
tions on your talents, or on your culture, or on 
your will-power, or on your whole-heartedness, . 
or on the nobility of your ideals and thoughts 
and ways. It may also be a limitation on your 
reputation and standing, due to some sin or 
blunder of yours of which you may, or may not, 
be aware. It may be some natural fault of yours 
which repels people or distresses them, a fault 
like envy, or jealousy, or avarice, or impulsive 
speech, or violent temper, or intolerance, or gos- 
sip, or deceit—some natural tendency which you 
have not learned how to subdue or exterminate. 
It may be worse, or it may be the milder fault of 
shyness, or morbidness, or tactlessness, if that 
can be called a mild fault. There are so many 


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Difficulties and Encouragements 


difficulties within you. Two things should en- 
courage you. One is that there is a way of cur- 
ing them, and Christ has the cure in his posses- 
sion. Get into right accord with him, and you 
are safe. Another encouragement is that, when 
people see that you are fighting a battle with 
yourself and doing it in the right spirit, they will 
applaud you and trust you. They will appreciate 
you all the more for your nobility in making the 
fight. Your success will be all the more dis- 
tinguished for the difficulties overcome. If you 
have done wrong, retract it and repair the wrong. 
That will advance you in the esteem of all who 
know about it. If your standing has been poor, 
it will be all the better for your effort to regain 
your right place. 

Another group of difficulties 1s found in the 
people in whose interest you work and in those 
who work with you. All of them have faults, 
possibly as bad as yours, possibly worse. Re- 
member two facts—that God has done something 
for you and therefore he can do much for them 
and through them; also that it takes time to get 
results. So master yourself in the name and by 
the power of Christ, and work on. 

Another set of difficulties 1s m the circum- 
stances in which you work. The ethical and so- 
cial habits of the community may be against you. 
Perhaps the people are pleasure-mad or society- 
mad or money-mad. There may be marked skep- 
ticism or irreligion in the life of the people. 
Estrangements and enmities may divide the com- 


[177] 


You and Your Church 


munity, or some of the families of the commu- 
nity, or even members of the same families. The 
level of culture may be low, interest in the things 
of the spirit subordinated to interest in the things 
of the letter or of the flesh. The number of 
Christians may be so small compared with the 
rest of the population as to make you and your 
associates feel lonely and insufficient. The social 
or financial importance of the people outside the 
churches, or their culture; or their natural traits 
may seem to put you and the other Christians at 
a disadvantage. It may even be possible that you 
are poorly adjusted in some one element of your 
relational life and you feel that it is a fatal handi- 
cap. Whether you have these peculiar difficul- 
ties or not, you have the sinful nature that is 
common to all men to contend with and to 
overcome. 


2. Encouragements 


If God saved you and your associates 1m work, 
he surely ought to be able to accomplish his pur- 
pose for those in whom you are interested. They 
may not be less promising than ‘ some of you.” 
Remember how Paul recounted the awful vices 
of the people at Corinth and then said, “ And 
such were some of you, but ye are washed,” etc. 
Cheer up. 

Again, remember that your Christian character 
is the most powerful human means which God 
uses at all. Live the life well, and you will make 
an impression on your environment, however ob- 


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Difficulties and Encouragements 





stinate and obdurate. Even though in your rela- 
tional life there be adverse elements, they cannot 
withstand you and Christ combined, especially 
when the Spirit of God dwells within you, in- 
forming you, energizing you, directing you, build- 
ing you up in Christ. If you are Christlike, your 
character will flow along the channels of your 
connection with people in the domestic, religious, 
social, business, educational relations in which 
you live. 

Also, remember that this enterprise of yours 
as a Christian is God’s. It was his before you 
made it yours. He initiated it. He first saw the 
goal you are driving for, away off yonder. It is 
his purpose you are carrying out. The plan on 
which you work is his plan. The power with 
which you work comes from him. His presence 
is assured and is a fact every minute you are at 
work in thought or ideal or act. His partnership 
is what gives coherence and continuity and stabil- 
ity to both you and your work. ‘“ We are God’s 
fellow laborers,” says Paul to the Corinthians. 
Said Jesus in the book of Revelation to John, 
“He that overcometh, I will give to him to sit 
down with me in my throne, as I also overcame 
and sat down with my Father in his throne.” 
“Your labor is not in vain in the Lord.” Others 
will help you to succeed, “finish what you begin 
and what you fail of win,” as the lines have it. 
“ Wherefore, . . let us lay aside every weight, . . 
and let us run with patience the race that is set 
before us, looking unto Jesus.”’ 


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You and Your Church 


This is your deepest and dearest thought: 


I ask no heaven till earth be thine, 

No glory crown while work of mine 
Remaineth here. 

When earth shall shine among the stars, 
Her sins wiped out, her captives free, 
Her voice a music unto thee, 

For crown new work give thou to me; 
Lord, here am I. 


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